Personal Trainer

A week ago I decided I would suck up the cost and hire a personal trainer. Sarah, who is Lawrence's boss' girlfriend, hired a personal trainer about a month ago and he says that he has definitely noticed a difference. I should have done this 2 months ago, hell probably in January when I saw flyers for personal trainers left in our building's gym. Better late than never, and maybe in a month I'll be able to see enough of a difference to look decently good for Caroline's wedding.

Lawrence helped me look on Yelp, and the girl we found sounded really good - Melody Schoenfeld (her Yelp reviews). I went in on Sunday morning for an assessment, where I let her know what I wanted to work on and where she gauged where my weak areas were. She has a pack of kitties at her house (squee!). The toughest thing she had me do was to see how many pushups I could do. She's also got a ridiculous sense of humor and I collapsed after she made me laugh so much I couldn't lift myself back up. She's a sharp lady, and I could tell her mind moves very quickly - she talks fast. After the assessment I scheduled my first session with her for the next day, Monday. Luckily I had the day off because it was a holiday so I had the entire day to lounge around and get myself mentally ready to get my butt kicked.

My first session with Melody was at the gym. It's actually a kickboxing gym, but they have a weight training room that she uses for her training sessions. She recommended I start with half hour sessions because people have a difficult time lasting the entire hour, especially at the first session. I didn't realize how true that would be (sometimes I get a "toughing it out" complex whereI have to do things the hard way to show I can tough it out). She took out a cord and looped it over the top of the Smith machine so the two ends dangled near the ground. At each end were handles. These weight training exercises were much more involved than just lifting weights. They were like, full body weight training but with no weights involved - just gravity and my own body weight. Making the exercise more easy or difficult depended on the angle at which I lean to do the exercise, making it quite easy to adjust the difficulty.

Each exercise was 15 reps if I could make it, and 10 if I absolutely couldn't and man...after 20 minutes I was light headed and feeling ready to throw up! At the end, we had a few minutes left and Melody helped me work out a few kinks in my back. It felt very nice and by the time I left, I felt both tired and energized. Thursday, I'm going back to her house for more!

Edit: The soreness has started to kick in. I may not be able to move by this time tomorrow...luckily knitting only takes wrist motion. I may do some stretches tonight for damage control. I want to be able to get to work tomorrow.