Sunday, June 29, 2014

Big Girl Panties

OK does anyone hate the word "panties" as much as I do?  I don't know what it is but I've always hated that word...it just has this weird connotation and just sounds so...awful.  Ha!  Total fingernails on chalkboard for me...Hubs always teases me by saying it over and over and making my skin crawl.  Monkey. 

Anyways...this week I ended up putting my big girl panties on (ugh) and...wait for it...went to the gym to work out by myself for the first time EVER.  I know!!  Crazy, right?  As I've mentioned previously, I have a horrible fear of the gym and am so intimidated, particularly when it comes to doing weights.  I have nightmares of making an idiot of myself, but one of the reasons why I wanted to work with a personal trainer was so I would learn how to use the equipment properly, and figure how to set it up myself.  My trainer and I have had a few scheduling conflicts so there's a two week break where we won't be meeting, and I figured you know what...I'm just going to bite the bullet and go to the gym on my own so I don't totally lose what we've worked together to build.  Of course I chose a Friday night because it's pretty quiet at that time, Hubs was out playing hockey anyways and there's not a lot of people around to see me make a fool out of myself.  I was actually a little surprised at how many people there were actually, as I expected to be the only one there...there were a fair number of young guys working out and I kept thinking OK...I'm old, well past my bar star days and have nothing else better to do on a Friday night but come on!  Shouldn't you young bucks be hanging out at the bars cruising chicks?  Anyways...I went through as many of the exercises that I could do that didn't require a spotter, and I didn't increase the weights too much as Graham wasn't there to watch my form or assist if I needed it.  One funny thing though...I wanted to try the deadlifts on my own but couldn't actually lift the trap bar out of the stand it was on...it's not that heavy at 55 pounds, but it was awkward to lift out of the holder because I'm so short.  I attempted it twice and tried to look nonchalant when I couldn't get it out, all the while furtively looking around to see if anyone could see my failed attempts.  Trap bar fail undetected.  Whew.

So...pretty proud of myself that I went there and got 'er done.  Big girl panties solidly on.

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Personal Training - Session 1

OK confession time here...I don't know what it is and I know one day...one day...I will get over it, but I still feel crazy intimidated going into a gym setting.  I know, I know!  I need to freaking just get over it and put my big girl panties on, but seriously each and every time I have to go to anywhere that is vaguely gym-like, I have to psyche myself up to walk in the door.  I went to talk to a local gym recently about a membership and even as I was getting a tour of the facilities, I still felt nervous and broke out in a cold sweat.  Somehow the gym still brings back horrible memories of high school gym class fails and even though I know that no one is watching me and judging, I cannot seem to get over it.  Confession over.  Ha! 

So I'm totally hoping that I'm going to like working with a personal trainer.  I'd been thinking about it for ages and finally decided to bite the bullet back in February.  I really enjoy working out in a group setting but thought that working one on one might be good for a change of pace.  I hate to disappoint people so tend to work way harder for someone else, I like having someone working with me because I'm a chickenshit and hate being alone in the gym (ha!) and because I'm more of an introverted personality, might find for strength training that a personal trainer would be better. I typically hate having any attention on me, but having a personal trainer means I kinda have to get over that.   At first I was wondering if I would feel uncomfortable being the only person that Graham was focussing on (and seeing me make my ugly I'm-calling-on-my-ancestors-to-get-me-through-this-last-rep face) but after the first class I realized it was a different kind of attention.  We're working together and I'm fairly certain he's not thinking in his head "holy crap, is she ever weak" or "wow, those shorts don't do her any favours!" but critiquing my form and thinking of things that would help me obtain my goals. 

Tuesday's session was actually technically the first session, but Friday was the first day where I really had to put the pedal to the metal.  We're doing a split workout routine so upper one session, lower the next so Friday's session was upper.  Exercises we did were:

Overhead shoulder press
Chin ups (ack!!!)
Alternating chest press
Barbell row
Cable pull
Upper back face pull
Hanging chair raise

How was it?  Well I gotta say...I am so very glad that the gym was virtually empty because my chin ups were pretty pathetic!  I pushed pretty hard on the shoulder press so when I got to the chin ups, it took every fibre of my being to do six very weak chin ups.  Blargh.  But overall, I really liked the exercises...they were all quite different than what I had done before and Graham really took into account the issues I brought up (upper back and shoulder weakness, posture) while still keeping in mind the goal to become stronger and more muscular overall.  Or, as he named this program "Buff"...hah!

So how am I feeling?  Yesterday morning I was barely sore, so I was wondering maybe if I didn't push hard enough.  I admit I was worried about overdoing it on my shoulder so may have held back a wee bit but lo and behold...today I'm sore like crazy (hello my old friend DOMS...haven't seen you in quite awhile!) and I can barely raise my arms above my head, but no shoulder pain!  None!  I might not be able to shampoo my hair for a few days in the shower, but I'm super happy and stoked about my shoulder.  Must be sure to tell Graham the good news!

The other thing I'm going to really work hard on is my nutrition...no use in paying for all these sessions and working out so hard to undo it with bad eating.  I hadn't really thought about it as I had figured that my diet is pretty darn healthy and clean since Hubs and I changed how we eat the past year or so but if I'm really trying to build muscle Graham suggested I need to up my protein intake to around 1 gram per pound of body weight...nutrition is key to building muscle.  One gram per pound means 120 grams of protein per day which is quite a lot but if that's what it takes, that what it takes.  I figure if I'm spending all this time and money on these sessions, that to see the full effect of the training I should do what it takes to reach my goals so protein shakes, here I come!

Soooo...Tuesday is lower body.  Excited to see what the workout will be!

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Fresh Start

Where to start, where to start...I guess I should start with an apology for my lack of bloggingness lately!  Things have been crazy the past few months with a change in work duties, parental health issues and just general overall life, and I seemed to have lost my mojo for blogging.  And I have to apologize to all those amazing bloggers out there for my lack of commenting...I've been keeping up on blogs through Feedly and there's no ability to comment easily, so I read and don't comment and I feel awful, like some creepy lurker.  Ha!  But I'm still keeping up on the goings on, and sending my support and love to you all.

So what's new with me?  Still at the swimming...I am determined...determined...to learn how to do the front crawl if it kills me!  I fully admit that I was getting incredibly frustrated because I was not getting it.  What has me stumped?  How to roll my body when I swim so I can breathe, which is a very important function when you're in the water, hee hee.  After trying and trying and swallowing more chlorinated water than I care to admit (ick) and getting frustrated beyond belief, I decided to pull things back and work on breathing until finally the last class I was able to sorta kinda do it!  Third time is the charm...this is the third time I've taken the beginner swimming class and hope with a little extra practice, I might go into the deep end for the first time, ever.  Eeeee.

The other thing that's new?  I finally bit the bullet and have signed on to work with a personal trainer!  I know myself and I work way harder when I'm working out with an instructor so figured this would keep me on track with building up my strength...left to my own devices, I'm way easier on myself than someone else would be.  I'm back at PISE, and actually had my first session tonight.  We mostly chatted to get a better idea of where I was at, even though I had sent the poor guy an extremely verbose email about my current physical pursuits and goals for these sessions...while I'm not looking to lose any weight (and am OK with gaining weight even!), my main goal is to improve my strength and become more muscular overall.  I'm back to being a bit "soft", shall we say?  I really enjoyed strength training last year with Josh and loved being stronger overall.  Anyways, my trainer Graham and I did some strength assessments tonight and I came up excellent in grip strength and flexibility (not surprising as I'm hypermobile) and very good for my age group as far as push ups...somewhere, somehow, I was able to pull off 21 good form full pushups from the toes and needed to eke out 3 more for excellent...not bad for an old bat like me!  We did a few other exercises like deadlifts and squats just so he could get a rough idea of where I was at with things and we dive in with an upper body workout on Friday.  Woohoo!  I'm pretty excited about these sessions, so look out for lots of verbose (tee hee!) updates on what we're up to.