gym blog: day two

I was not as sore as I expected to be, after the first workout. Whether the trainer really accurately judged my physical capabilities, or if I knew when to stop, or some happy combination thereof, it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

Which isn’t to say I haven’t spent the past three days whimpering and groaning and staggering. Once I get moving I’m okay but my thighs have lodged a Strong Protest, and sitting down has become something of a matter of faith that the chair isn’t going to move in any way because this is not a controlled fall I’m doing here. :)

Despite having a guest, I thought it would be wisest to get myself to the gym on Friday, so that I wouldn’t have to start all over again on Monday with New Fresh Pain. Fortunately, said guest was willing to go to the gym herself (“I have regrets,” she said later), and so off we went.

In retrospect, I suspect the fact that I was able to do some of the full 3×15 sets during the first workout is probably not entirely unrelated to the fact that I had taken some ibuprofen before I went to the gym, because I already had a headache.

For Day Two I warmed up with some barre and floor exercises, because obviously my thighs needed more agony.

I’m not good at setting crosstrainer and cycling programs, because they expect you to start moving to activate the machine and then push the buttons. I mostly start moving and then start panicking at all the flashing buttons and can’t remember what I’m supposed to do, and by the time I’ve remembered/figured it out, 3 minutes in, keying it in resets the timers that were going on their merry way just assuming you knew what you were doing. Consequently my time on the bike and crosstrainer was less structured/accurate/difficult than it might otherwise have been. Also I’m pretty sure I was supposed to set the rowing machine difficulty to 10, because otherwise I improved my time by 25 seconds between one session and the next, which isn’t impossible but probably isn’t really likely either.

I don’t think I did a single one of the weights to to a 3×15. I did a lot of 15, 12, 10 reps, and I switched to lighter weights for the walking lunge because by the end of the second set I could barely call what I was doing a lunge at all. I probably COULD have pushed myself to a 3×15 on everything, but that would have been stupid and I’m enthusiastically not into gym stupidity anymore. (I was never IN to it, I just didn’t gauge my fitness level well enough and would consequently overdo it.)

The thing that surprised me, though, was that the You Have Got To Be Fucking Kidding Me plank (which involves starting in ‘full plank’, which to me is ‘start of a push-up’ mode. Go down on your elbows, one side at a time, then up again, starting on the same side you put down first. Repeat 3x as often as possible. In my case, the first go was 3×1 and I fell over on the last one.) WAS MUCH EASIER on just the SECOND workout. I increased my reps by 2/3rds, succeeding with 2 reps once and 1.5 reps the second two times.

Either I gained some kind of magic strength or I’d gone enough easier on myself through the whole workout that I could do just a little more. But it was pretty satisfying either way. :)

(My sister, the one whom I’d muttered, “My sister could do this,” at the trainer about, made one of her yoga students do the YHGTBFKM plank on Thursday, “because my sister had to do them yesterday!” #justice? :))

If houseguest & I are particularly splendid we may go back to the gym again tomorrow. Otherwise I’ll go Monday, which is probably soon enough.

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