Upon our arrival, Mir has to fill out a waiver because she's not a regular member and so I pop over and say hi to Justin. He gives me a little flack for simply telling him that I was bringing her (all in fun because I did have a disclaimer of 'if it's okay with you'). He then informs me that because it's going to be too time consuming to teach her how to use various machines that what we're going to end up doing is 'Tabouli'. Or something like that. Ciabatta maybe? I can never remember. Regardless, it's the whole twenty seconds of intensity followed by ten seconds of nothing. Sister Miriam better appreciate what I'm about to go through in the name of inclusion.
We change and begin with our warm up on the cross trainer and she tells me all about her upcoming school work and her life and all that. We both do ten minutes and she makes a comment about how the cross trainer is weird because she should be able to go farther than half a mile in ten minutes. Justin appears and we start. First up is squats. Twenty seconds of as many squats as we can, then ten seconds of nothing. Eight times. Kill me now. The last time I did something remotely like this was with a pair of officers at Gordon College Public Safety and I could hardly move for four days.
Sister Miriam and I both hold our own. I think she technically does more squats than I do, but who says we're competing? Next we alternate bicep curls and wall sits. Awful, awful wall sits. At one point Miriam says she loses feeling in her legs. I am not so blessed and I can feel each and every strain of my muscles. Bicep curls are a little easier, but by the end of the four sets (four of each) my arms are exhausted. But we're not done. We have crunches and tricep something or others. I rock the triceps and insist on more weight. Mir kicks my butt at the crunches. But her arms are shorter so I technically have a greater distance to travel. That's my excuse, anyways.
In our second to last set of exercises we do hovers and side lunges. This is where both of us struggle. I hate hovers and constantly stand up too fast and get a little dizzy. Mir feels like she may pass out. But you know what? We finish because we can. It may be at a slower pace than normal, but we finish. Our final exercise is to alternate side-hovers. At the conclusion of everything, both of us feel pretty great. I'll give the victory to Mir because I want to be nice. Also because she probably actually did beat me.
was it perhaps Tabata? that always kicks my butt. it's great because you can adjust the work/rest ratio as needed, and then bump the intensity over time. good stuff!
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