Shenanigans...

Given the amount of traffic on my last post, I've decided to constantly hit you with my vulnerability. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, I'm using my vulnerability as a weapon. Which makes me sound awful but all I really mean to say is that if my most popular posts are ones that I am convinced will be embarrassing and they are the ones that people appreciate the most, maybe I need to suck it up and take a few risks. We'll see how that manifests itself in the coming days.

Thursday night was a generally successful training session. At least as far as I can remember. That's the downside to waiting to post until the day after (or sometimes six days after) a session: I tend to forget what actually happened. I do remember doing my first ever real bench presses, however. So cross that off of my bucket list. Interesting that it took me eight months to work up to what I consider to be a very standard exercise to do at the gym. Maybe this is reflective of my procrastinating nature, but I can't take all the blame. Justin had sixteen sessions prior to this one to have me do some bench pressing and he chose not too. Maybe I was not mentally prepared for the challenge of bench pressing. Who knows.

I also remember that I went to CX Works again. Only this time I dragged Fit Andrew along. Thank goodness he was willing to go with me because Best Friend Rachel was not. Let me preface the following with this statement: I am proud of all the work that I have done. That statement does not make it easier to sit through a half hour class where I mentally convince myself that I can't physically do some of the things required. I'm choosing to phrase it that way because Justin is constantly telling me that the reason I can't do things like wall sits or hovers is more a result of my brain not thinking I can rather than my body actually being unable to do it. 

And this is why I hate Fit Andrew, on occasion. He can basically do anything. I've come to CX Works a couple of times and while I have seen improvement, a lot of the time I'm simply collapsed in a heap on the floor rather than actually exercising. And he struts in having never taken the class before and mildly breaks a sweat on one exercise. It's not fair for me to hold that against him; he's put in the work in the past. But that doesn't make it any easier to be the person sitting next to him who can only do two leg extensions before having to take a break.

Here's the problem I continually come up against: despite knowing that there is no point in comparing myself to someone who is leaps and bounds ahead of where I am in the great world of physical fitness, I do it anyways. Who is going to feel successful when comparing accomplishments against someone with a very obvious advantage. I can't even run a mile so why on earth would I compare myself to a person who runs marathons. They can do twenty six more miles than I can. No duh. Because they've trained. They didn't start out running twenty six miles. But I still get mad that I can't do that! I'm telling you, it makes no logical sense.

Fortunately or unfortunately logic doesn't really come into play at the gym. By all logic I would not want to try lifting 150 or 200 lbs just for the sake of proving I can. At the gym people do it constantly. Other animals simply get there exercise by going about living. Humans run with no purpose other than to burn calories. That is not logical by the laws of nature. There is no physical destination that we are running towards. Just the promise of a healthier body.

On Saturday, I make every attempt to start my day off as healthily as possible. This three day weekend promises to feature a lot of food and I feel the need to preemptively burn calories. I try to wake up by 7:00 to get to the gym for a class at 7:30. Not only do I wake up a mere fifteen minutes before the class starts, but by the time I get there and see that I have no clue who the teacher is, I psych myself out and can't make myself go into the studio. My trip is almost in vain except that I force myself to do some seated rows and bicep curls. A grand total of fifteen minutes of exercise when it should have been an hour.

I go home and waste some time. I still have plans to go to spin at 10:00 after I get my oil changed. I head to Jiffy Lube with what I think is enough time to get my oil changed and have time to spare, but apparently everyone and there mother (literally, there was a mother/daughter pair) wanted their oil changed. So I make it to the gym several minutes after spin starts. I am not one to enter late to anything, so I decide to just do the treadmill and then leave.

Apparently anger is a great motivator (though I'll also attribute some of it to the wonderful music of Robyn). I start off by jogging for three solid minutes. Three minutes! I take a two minute walk break and then jog for two minutes! A two minute walk break and then one minute of jogging! Then I stick to one minute increments because I'm tired. But with all of that motivation I do a mile in just over twelve minutes. Now that's an accomplishment I can be proud of.

I don't quite make two miles by the end of my walk/run because I walk for the last ten minutes of my thirty minutes. I leave the gym proud of my accomplishment, though still disappointed in the lack of success based on my intended plan for the day. Sometimes you have to roll with the punches and fit in whatever exercise you can. So there are my wise words for the day. Take it or leave it.

Perspective...

I wake up this morning incredibly sore, especially my inner and outer thighs. I know yesterday was my leg day but this isn't usually how I feel when I wake up. I'll take that as an encouragement that I'm doing something right. Oddly enough, soreness is encouragement. Though please don't misunderstand me and think that I'm saying soreness is pleasant. It is far from pleasant. My entire day is spent hobbling from location to location and trying to move as little as possible because my muscles hurt so bad.

By the time 6:00 rolls around and Fit Andrew and I leave for the gym, my muscles have loosened up and it doesn't take too much effort to walk. Though the stairs at the gym still give me a bit of a workout. The thing I'm dreading the most is the warm up. The cross trainer is a terror on your legs, in terms of the burning and working of muscles. And on sore muscles? I can only imagine what that's like and it looks something like the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan (cheesy joke alert post cheesy joke).

I have to start out slow, unfortunately. Though, truth be told, that's the whole point of a warm up. You gradually work up to where you need to be for the subsequent workout (boy I sound like a fitness genius right now). It is slower than usual, however; a sign of my fatigue. I get through two songs that puts my warm up right at eight minutes. After a quick wipe down of the machine, WHICH EVERYONE SHOULD DO, I run into Justin on his way to retrieve me.

We start with pull downs, tricep pushes and one minute hovers. The hovers are really killing me, today. My abs are sore and I start to feel like I'm losing control of my muscles. That proves that they work. If you ever doubted, shame on you. You should have to do hovers as a punishment.

Here's my one complaint about weight lifting: The whole business of have to consciously use the muscles you're supposed to use is bogus. The moves should just automatically work the correct muscles. I don't like it when Justin has to tell me to be sure to pull my shoulder blades together as I do the pull downs. Shouldn't that just be what happens? I think it should.

We move on to a machine in the cardio room and try to do another pull down exercise, but I am too tall. I had no idea you could be too tall to do an exercise. But I guess at six foot four, it really is quite possible. So instead I have to do a half squat row. Squats are not nice to do when your quads are in pain to begin with. It is especially not nice when you have to maintain a half squat while doing a row. My back feels tight, my legs hurt, my neck starts to get a little sore, it's a generally awful experience. But I have been doing a great job, if I do say so myself, of not voicing those complaints during the training session. Apart from the intial "you're awful", "I hate you", or, "you're so mean."

We end with single tricep pushes (I guess it's an arm heavy day) and Justin then makes me go to a half hour CX Works class. This class is an intense half hour of strength exercise and core exercise and squatting and lunging and planking and hovering and it's awful and wonderful all at the same time. When you do this class it is very apparent from minute one that you are working your muscles. Basically it extended my personal training session by half an hour and amped up the intensity by about fifty. Simply because it's so fast paced.

It really does feel good to be getting back into the habit of making it to the gym. We'll see if I say the same thing tomorrow, considering I will yet again be to the gym at 6:00am, but I have a feeling that I will. It just feels good to know that I'm doing something that's good for me, regardless of how I feel in the moment. That's why I hope that Justin or Kiki or any other instructor doesn't only take my 'during' reaction as how I really feel. I love it all.