Crack...

My alarm goes off at 6:30 and I hate myself for scheduling this personal training session for 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday. I'm a person who enjoys the few chances I get to sleep in and to have to wake up early is bad enough, but I'm doing this to go exercise. Granted, I am much less annoyed than I would have been 5 months ago, but still, this is not an ideal Saturday morning. So I hit 'snooze' once. But then I really do force myself out of bed and down from the loft to get ready.

You know what sucks? When you wake up tired but you have to get ready because you are under a time crunch but then you take far less time than you thought to get ready and you have fifteen minutes to waste that could have been spent under the covers getting more sleep. So I hear, anyways. But I will sacrifice if it means going to the Best Picture Showcase. Check it out if you have no idea what I'm talking about, but basically I will be seeing all the best picture nominees before the Oscars on the 24th. This is my march madness.

When I arrive at the gym, I pick up my special form that shows my insurance provider that I have been an active member long enough to get my rebate and then head down the stairs to change. I have been unbelievably sore since Thursday and I still have some residual ache in my thighs when I use the stairs. Work through it though, right? It does cause my elliptical time to be slightly more difficult than usual, but after seven and a half minutes, I still feel pretty groovy, despite my fear that my crack is hanging out for all the world to see (a not so positive side effect of a shrinking waistline).

Justin meets me downstairs and we head to the weight room to start the workout. I have to tell you that the thing I appreciate the most about this personal training endeavor is learning how to use some equipment. Gone are the days of wondering around pretending like I know what I'm doing. I actually do know what I'm doing, now. Or at least I'm learning. I start with some cable rows on this giant apparatus that must have at least twelve different components for a combined total of 33,000 different exercises. So I do the rows with minute hovers (like planking, only on my forearms instead of my hands) in between sets.

Then we move on to an exercise in the cardio room that I can't begin to name, so I'll describe it. It's on the same machine that I would do the tricep exercise on, and in fact uses the same rope attachment. I face the machine and have my arms outstretched in front of me, gripping the rope. I then pull my fists back to my cheeks, making a point to squeeze my shoulder blades together. Fifteen reps and then fifteen wall squats (against an exercise ball, which seems terrifyingly unstable) three times. In an attempt to show Justin that sometimes I do have legitimate questions and I'm not always stalling to avoid doing work, I ask a question while I do squats. Mainly I'm curious if squatting with the ball works muscles in a different way. Apparently it's all about training myself to have good form when I do regular squats. 

Then we head back into the cardio room and I do some weird pull down thing while seated. I only say 'weird' because I don't know the actual name of the exercise. But I have seen people do it before. I don't know if this makes me qualified to be talking about it or if it's simply something I have literally observed before, so make your own decision about that. This is interspersed with side planks which, as we all know, I hate. I feel obligated to tell Justin that I really am a generally cheerful person and that I'm not always such a complainer (who am I kidding, I complain constantly).

Once the workout is over I shower and change because I have to leave right from the gym to go to Boston. And I grab a meal replacement shake on the way, because I like them. And, on Sunday, I buy myself some weights because I want to be able to do some stuff at home in case I can't get to the gym for some unknown reason. Guys, my whole attitude has changed.