Today I joined the ranks of people who have personal trainers. That sounds so decadent to me. But as of today, I have a trainer for one hour a week. Her name is Carla, and she's cute and funny and 27 years old and speaks English and looks like she exercises A LOT.
My appointed hour with her is from 7:45 to 8:45 on Tuesday mornings and I must admit I was looking pretty good in some of my new exercise gear today. Color-coordinated and all. I even shaved my legs for the occasion.
Carla had me walk on the treadmill for 10 minutes to get warmed up. She didn't set the treadmill at a fast speed, so I breezed through that. Then we went over to one of those weight machines for your legs. I NEVER use those machines because they really intimidate me. They have all these pins that move the seat up and down and forward and backward and more pins to change the weights. It's just too much for me to figure out. Well she put me on this thing that worked the fronts of my thighs. Piece of cake. She had to add more weight on twice because I was so strong. Clearly she must have been thinking I was going to be her star pupil.
Then she had me flip on my stomach on the same machine to work the backs of my thighs. O-U-C-H. She went down to the lowest weight on the machine and it hurt so much. I am such a weak loser. The good thing is I only had to do 3 sets of 15 reps each (with a break in between) so I knew the torture wouldn't last forever.
We then moved over to a bench where I was laying on my back and was going use free weights to work on triceps. She chose the weights she thought would be good, and so that I would learn the correct movement, she guided me through the first couple reps. Then she let go and the weights were much heavier than I expected and I almost bonked my head. Close call. I had totally lost star pupil status by now.
We then moved on to other fun things that will render my inner and outer thighs and calf muscles useless tomorrow. We did stomach crunches, which are really my least favorite exercise of all time. When I told her I hated crunches, she told me hate was a strong word and to start moving. And I'll be lucky if I can lift the milk out of the fridge in the morning because my arms will probably just hang by my sides.
And that was all before we moved on to stretching. My idea of stretching stems from my love of yoga classes. There's some nice music playing in the background, you concentrate on your breathing, and it's a really lovely, serene atmosphere. Carla's idea of stretching is to lift your legs in the air with one knee crossed over the other and she leans on them with all her body weight so that your hamstrings think they're 2 milliseconds away from absolutely popping. Or she pulls your arms so far straight back behind you that they're nearly touching. Can that possibly be good for the body?
Of course I know in theory that this is all good and when I have abs that are remotely recognizable as abs, this will all be worth it. Tomorrow, I'm not so sure how I'm going to feel about it!
And Carla, if you're reading this post, I really loved the class and being with you today and I am counting the minutes until next Tuesday!:)
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