My first experience with a personal trainer
Today, at 8 am (yes, that is a couple hours earlier than usual) I had my first session with a personal trainer. Despite being a competitive swimmer for most of my life, except the last gloriously lazy 5 years, I have never had a session with a personal trainer, done any fitness classes or for that matter, ever been a member of a gym. (And let me tell you, there are a lot of machines and contraptions that make no sense - why it takes a machine 10 feet tall, with various wires, ropes and bars set in such an arrangement that only fictional evil mad geniuses can appreciate, to make one tiny little muscle go pop, is beyond me.)
So despite my fear of activity (and torture machines), I joined a gym last week and as part of my membership I get one free personal trainer session every month which I foolishly signed up for immediately because it was free, and everyone loves free stuff, right?
The whole thing started out with a lady, very nice but who I did not know at all, weighing me, telling that ——-% of my body was lard, and then measuring each limb, hip and roll just to really drill it in. Not to mention a talk about my eating habits - main takeaways: eat more protein and take a daily multi-vitamin (this with a very stern, nun-like expression repeated 3 times throughout the session not mention the recommendation to consider taking some nutrition classes).
Once my examination was done (and I was determined a compete physical disaster) it was time for the full body workout to begin. Since this morning, my last hard workout session was a 5K over a year ago in which I dressed up as a beer maiden, ran hungover (do not recommend), and had to have my friend’s boyfriend carry me home. Needless to say, it had been a while. And it felt like it every minute of the workout.
We had to do push ups, squats, abs, weights, boxing, lunges, and this death defying jump up onto a platform which is not only exhausting, but the more tired you get the more assured you are that you’ll miss, trip over the thing and bite it face first into someone else platform, most likely while they jump down onto your head which has very nicely taken the place of their platform.
After doing all of the above, twice over (ah!), we had to run on the treadmill . . all out for five minutes. Which just caused me to realize that I will get my very own YouTube video starring myself falling off a moving treadmill.
However, after everything was done (and my heart beat was back to normal instead of being so high even the Treadmill computer was recommending that I get off it immediately and seek medical attention), I was glad I did it. It felt good to feel like maybe, just maybe, I can join the ranks of all those hyper, happy, fit (and right now annoying) people that populate this world. So while I have now a new found fear for treadmills and can’t pick up even a piece of paper, I will definitely be going back for more. And will try to avoid doing this:
