Pain and Results (I hope!)

I just started an exercise class. There were only five of us in the class and one personal trainer. Now, I love tough work outs. I don't see any point in doing it unless you're gonna go for it and push yourself. Having said that, I was totally unprepared for the beating. I've been working out for some time now and although I still have more fat on this body than is recommended, I have some good muscle tone under that fat, thank you very much, and some pretty good stamina going on. But within ten minutes into this hour long class, my entire body was jello with fifty minutes to go.

Here's just the first part of class, so that you have an idea of the experience. First, for our warm-up, we ran up and down the flight of stairs five times. Keep in mind that these are stairs in a commercial building and so they are longer than the flight of stairs in our homes. We were breathing really hard by the end, but it was doable.

Next, she set us up with five different stations and we were to do each exercise for one minute. I could see that most of them weren't going to be that bad. Push-ups for a whole minute would be tough, triceps behind the head with a 10 lbs weight--I'd really be feeling it, but knew I could make it. The bicep one I knew would be the easiest. The tossing the ball over your head against the wall as fast as you can, didn't look too hard, and running the stairs for the other station would leave me winded, but I knew I could do it. Not a piece of cake, but remember, I like tough work outs.

I was at the bicep station to begin with. It wasn't that tough, but my eyes got big as I watched our trainer go over to my friend at the push-up station, place one hand on each shoulder blade and push down. You gotta be kidding me?! Push ups like that? Thirty seconds into it, she moved over to the tricep station, took hold of the bottom of the weight and pulled down. The friend at this station started grunting heavily with each rep. Yep, by now I was nervous!

My second station was triceps. I've done tricep with a twenty lb weight before, but I have NEVER worked those muscles like I did with her pulling down on the weight! At the end of the minute my arms were feeling things they had never before felt.

I moved over to the station with the ball. It looked like a regular basketball. Imagine my chagrin when I picked it up and realized that it weighed ten lbs!! My arms were complete jello from the last station, so the ten lbs felt like thirty, and the minute like at least five!

I then ran stairs and now my whole body is completely exhausted, and it's time for push-ups! Every time she pushed down on my shoulder blades, my arm muscles collapsed! I just didn't have it in me.

She then let us take a quick sip of water, towel off the sweat that was dripping like rain and said, "One more time." We did the circuit again.

That was just the first part of the class. She didn't let up for the whole hour. And I do mean hour --she worked us the entire time, to the last minute and told us that we could cool down and stretch on our own time!!!

When the class finally ended I was very sad to realize that those who designed the building didn't have the forsight to put an elevator in. Didn't they realize that there would be people who were in the state where they'd rather just sleep there for the night than to go down those stairs to get to their cars?

It's only because my dad taught me stay on two ibuprofin to prevent stiffness that I can actually make it all the way down to the toilet seat today. I have a dress for the upcoming wedding that I can zip up, but can't wear until I lose a few lbs. If anything can get me there, this is it. That is, if I can get up enough guts to go back on Thursday!