Private Thoughts Made Public

This morning I went back to the gym (pretty soon I’ll be living there full-time heheh) for an hour with the Personal Trainer. He started me on the treadmill, and not for the one-minute fast, one-minute slow that I’d been doing before. He had me walking at 6.5km/h (4mph) on an incline of 3 (I presume this means 3%, or a one-metre rise for every 100 metres walked) for two minutes, then at 4km/h on the flat for one minute. This was ok for the first couple of repetitions. Then my legs started to feel the burn. Speed up, slow down. Drip sweat. Speed up. Aching legs. Can I do this? I have to. Not for the Trainer’s benefit, but for mine. This is what I signed up for, this is what I want. But why does it have to hurt so much? On the third repetition I told him my legs were starting to ache a bit and he slowed it down to 6km/h. Which, let’s face it, is not much of a reduction in speed. 20 minutes I was on that thing, and when I stepped off my legs were definately on the wobbly side. While I was walking I told him about my 5lb weight loss, and about how often I’d been and how much I was enjoying it. Of course, that was while I was still able to talk. I managed to tell him that I wanted to do some work on strengthening my back and stomach muscles. It’s easy to work on th arms and legs, the back and sides tend to get left out.
He showed me several weight-training machines. He put on heavier weights than I’d have done if left to my own devices. He instructed me to do 15 reps. It’s a good job he was counting, because I was too busy trying not to break the machine, break my body or break my resolve. Finally he showed me some exercises which used my own body weight to provide the training. After 15 lunges on each leg I started to feel light-headed and he sent me outside for a few minutes fresh air. Of course I was feeling light-headed because my muscles were using up oxygen, and I wasn’t always breathing properly. This happened 45 minutes into the hour, so the last 10 minutes were spent with him showing me some more exercises but not pushing me too much.
However I did gain a lot from the session. I learned how to use a lot more of the machines. I learned how to breathe (although I didn’t always remember to breathe!) and I learned that I can push myself more than I thought I was able to. As I write this it’s 12 hours since the session started, and so far I feel good. I’m not aching anywhere at the moment, but I fully expect to ache all over tomorrow!
Talking of tomorrow, I promise I’ll post about something else other than the gym! I’m sure you’re all getting sick of reading about it by now….