It's most likely a bit premature to be writing about the wonders of the personal trainer my neighbor and I are working with. But after only two sessions, I have lots to say. And most of it includes the words, "ouch," and "ow."
If you looked up the phrase "impressive physical specimen" in the dictionary or on Wikipedia or on Google Images, you would see a picture of this guy. He's a tall, black man with shoulders almost too wide to get through a standard doorway. And he is a hell of a nice guy.
My neighbor had told me she heard he was a large, intimidating looking man and she was right, he was. When she introduced us to him on Monday, to me she seemed to be almost stumbling over her words. It was like she was a little nervous if he would consider taking us on as clients. He had heard we were coming though and yes, he said he would be glad to help us.
He asked us what we did for exercise and when we told him we ran he waited and we said we just ran and that was all. I seriously think he looked at us with a bit of disdain at that point. I am not sure if he was mentally reconsidering if he wanted to work with us, but then he walked us into the basketball court area and started putting us through some exercises.
That first day we only did thirty minutes with him. He said that was enough. He made us do bear crawls across the court, situps, pushups, wall stands, planks, high step running and kick step court crossing. And if you don't know what those things are, don't worry, I made some of the names up. We did alright I suppose because he said to come back on Wednesday.
We ran on the treadmill for another half hour and then went home. And then, the next morning, we were both more sore than we remembered in a long time. Muscles that hadn't been worked before were angry and were telling us about it, loudly. But we came back.
He had us do a ten minute warmup on Wednesday and left it up to us. We don't know how to stretch or what else to do that would constitute a "warm up" so we went over and ran on the treadmill for ten minutes. Then he put us through an entirely different set of exercises.
Let me stop right here and say that most of these exercises he was having us do were from thirty seconds to two minutes each. Most of them were thirty seconds. "Hell, I can do almost anything for thirty seconds," I thought. And I could, but there are some things that make thirty seconds seem like ten minutes.
We did pushups again and it was very clear I needed a lot of work in that area. We did modified jumping squat jacks (or that's how I thought of them) and we also did the "ropes." When he told us to do the ropes all the people in the gym that were working with him (and knew we were new) suddenly were cheering us on, before we'd even started, which should have been a sign.
The ropes are two ten foot ropes about two inches in diameter. They are heavy. You pick them up and try to flap them up and down, thus making sine waves down the length of the ropes. Guess how long you do this for? Twenty seconds. That's right, twenty seconds...of pain. I almost called for my mommy one time my arms were so sore.
Twenty seconds of one exercise, ten seconds rest, twenty seconds of a second exercise, ten seconds rest. Repeat that four times. Four minutes. Easy, right? Ugh. He sent us home after forty-five minutes yesterday. I appreciate now how much he knows about what he's doing. He knew we'd had enough before we did. Because I am sore, people! Very sore. Super sore. Major ouchie in places I didn't know had a right to be that sore.
He's a fun and funny guy and he makes it interesting. And as we were finishing for the day he said, "You both recover well. That's enough for today." I hadn't thought about that. We aren't great at these new activities and exercises, but we do have good stamina from all the running. After sets he'd ask us "Are you okay? How are you doing?" and we'd always be ready for the next thing. So at least we've got one thing going for us, even if our muscles are all rebelling at the new regime.
The Big Boy Update: Doorknobbed. Not a word, I know. But we had to put a child-preventing door knob device on the bedroom door so my son couldn't escape. He not only can open the door, he can climb over the gate. We had to up our game.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Potty with her pants on. Or in the bowl. She tries to go all the time. She doesn't know how or understand that she's suppose to take her pants off and she usually has a diaper on, but she goes an awful lot, in her diaper, while sitting on the potty. She then takes the insert, dumps the non-existent deposit into the big toilet and then flushes it. This morning, she got a salad bowl out of the kitchen cabinet, sat in it and made a royal mess in her pants.
Someone Once Said: Government! Three-fourths parasitic and the rest stupid fumbling—oh, conceded that man, a social animal, could not avoid government, any more than an individual could escape bondage to his bowels. But simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it “good.”
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