Hole Leigh

BALLS. Ho-kay so, I told my trainer today that I had no soreness after Saturdays workout and that was apparently code for do-work-son. We upped the reps and weight of just about everything we did. I gather he was waiting for me to acclimate to a normal workout schedule before he started pushing me. I think that process is underway. I found myself moving weight around that I didn't think I would have been able to. I exercised a few muscle groups to complete failure. Thats a weird sensation, when your muscles just say "nope, not doin it." The failure was due to lots of reps designed to push the muscle to failure and not excessive weight (as I understand that can be dangerous). My next meeting is Thursday, so I have 2 days of rest/recovery. I feel like I will probably need it.

After my workout I felt totally drained. I had to swing by the store to get some cottage cheese, and before doing that I had to get home and shower. My trainer gave me a more detailed meal plan, although its pretty much what/how I normally eat, so he said that was good. He also told me that we are going to start pushing the weight limit and the reps, though we will usually always push the reps before pushing the weight limit.

I bounced exercise to exercise with not a lot of rest in between. It was intense. My trainer (I hate using that term over and over, but I don't wanna use his actual name online) told me that this was probably the most difficult workout yet. I feel tired and worked out, but good.

I can tell I'm gonna sleep good tonight. So I'm gonna go do that.

Saturday

was yesterday. I met my trainer at the gym at 7am, which also meant I had to be up quite a bit before that to eat and hydrate. My workout yesterday was good, intense, but good. I could feel myself running out of energy about 3/4 the way through just cuz I didnt have as much to eat before working out.

I did a lot of upper body work yesterday. My shoulders are pretty sore today, and also a bit tight.

I have plans to work out tomorrow after work. I have to go, my dinner is a cookin.

Enjoy being able to put your coat on

...said my co-worker as I left today. Just prior to leaving he asked me what I was doing tonight and I said I was going to head to the gym. Last week my shoulders were so sore and stiff that I was having a hard time putting my coat on. But that was last week. THIS week I have been recovering very quickly. In fact I'm not even all that sore the next day. I definitely feel tight and worked out, but not "sore". My trainer said that is a good thing, that I am adapting to the workout he is putting me through.

I did a whole lot of upper body stuff today. One particular thing I was working on that fealt really good were these oblique pulls where you use a cable weight and stand with your arms outstretched holding the cable and twist, pulling the weight up on a pulley. Those really were working me. OOH, also I ran into an old friend at the gym. She was the first person I have seen there that I actually know. That was really nice to see someone that I knew, usually I just feel awkward and out of place.

Well I have my first weigh in on Saturday to see how I'm doing. I guess this will be 2 weeks-ish since I started training. After seeing my weights/measurements/%BF, he is going to decide whether to add a cardio routine to my off days and how much. I suspect an additional day will be required to drop the rest of the fat, although there doesn't seem to be too much there.

Well I feel good, tired, but good. I'm going to eat some light food and go to bed.

Until Saturday, Cheers!

Today went better

So I had my workout today with my trainer. I think it went really well. I seemed to not get as tired as quickly as last week. I was still pretty sore from Saturdays workout, but I think the overall time I take to recover from the excessive soreness is also getting shorter. We seemed to do slightly more exercises today than in previous sessions. I started working on "dips" and "the plank" both of which are a killer for me. I was unable to handle my own weight on the dips and had to switch to a machine which worked a similar movement only without my own weight added. I tried to eat a little more today as my trainer thought maybe I hadn't eaten enough on Saturday. I could definitely notice the difference! I could feel myself getting tired, but not necessarily running out of energy half way through the workout. For some reason I started cramping up on the dead lifts today. I was asked how much I drank today and I said something close to 2 liters throughout the day (two nalgene bottles worth). My trainer said that muscle dehydration probably wasnt the source of the cramping, but perhaps the particular muscle that was cramping was simply getting too much work and hadnt adapted to storing glycogen in the amount to match the demand I was placing on it. I stretched out that particular muscle group and we moved on to more upper body stuff.

So ya, all in all, I feel a lot better after my workout tonight. I'm not as completely obliterated as I previously was. Dont get me wrong, I'm definitely tired, but not crash hard tired.

So I hope that's a sign of improvement...

A day late

So I worked out on Saturday (yesterday), and didn't get a chance to make a blog post until today. So I have been having a really hard time with the soreness. My trainer tells me this will only last maybe two weeks, but it's just difficult to deal with right now. My workout on Saturday was a bit more intense than the one on Wednesday. We worked a lot of upper body stuff and a few exercises that worked my legs. One thing in particular that was quite difficult for me was a deadlift with a kettlebell. I did 3 sets of 15 on this exercise, and by the second set I was pretty tired. I have another meeting on Monday (tomorrow), and am going to go in later tonight and do some cardio on the treadmill, although I wont be working with my trainer tonight. I did notice that we didnt to many of the same exercises from our last session, save for some of the crunch type exercises. He tells me he will have my nutrition plan available on Monday (which I am to follow, but I dont think this will be much of an issue).

After working out I do feel really good. Usually I need to eat something, and drink a bunch, but about an hour after that I feel really good. I have been eating a small amount of cottage cheese and a banana after my workout for protein.

Well anyway, I'm keeping this one short.

Back at it tomorrow!

I think theres a muscle in my toe that doesn't hurt

But I'm sure I'll stub it tomorrow. OK! So, I went to my first workout today with my trainer. I expected to get right to exercising, but we actually talked for a bit. He had quite a few questions for me, wanting to know my eating habits, various health related things, expectations and goals. Since I have absolutely no clue when it comes to this stuff, I told him I didn't really know what goals to set. I told him that ideally I would want to look good and be in great shape. We set an initial goal of getting my %bodyfat down to 12% (I don't really know what that means), and to improve my overall strength.

We then left and went onto the gym floor. My trainer told me that we were going to initially work on core body strength. He explained that core strength is very important because without a strong core, you cannot safely perform many other types of exercise. We started working something called supersets, which (as I was explained) are basically just different exercises which work completely different muscle groups performed one right after the other with little rest in between. I did them in pairs.

After the work on the open floor area, we went to a few of the machines. I pressed weights in many different directions and really worked just about every muscle I can think of in my upper body. I am pretty sore, but I was told that is to be expected. Eventually I will switch to free weights, but not right away. My trainer told me that I will probably be really sore tomorrow and the next, so he wants to wait until Saturday to meet again.

So anyway, I'm exhausted and am going to bed.

Until Saturday, cheers!

What the hell is that noise?

I don't even know what the song was playing this morning, but my alarm went of at 5:40am. I promptly rolled over and formed the opinion that, at least for me, its way too damn early to be doing *anything*. There are two and exactly two things that I ever want to do at 5:40 am besides sleep: one is fishing, the other is not...

Before I go any further, I should probably introduce myself. My name is Sam. At the time of this writing I am a 6'7" tall 27 year old male who currently weighs 230lbs (down from 270, more on that later). I have never been in what you would call great shape. Due to my height, I have gotten away with hiding quite a bit of fat on my frame, but it was nothing more than that. Somewhere around 8 months ago I decided (pretty much out of nowhere) that I wanted to lose weight, get healthier, and basically just improve my physical being. Well... actually I decided I wanted to "look good", but they're kind of the same thing right? In a rash decision I swore off all food I classified as junk food. At that time that was pretty much all I was eating. Going cold turkey on the junk food ended up being much more of a challenge than I was expecting. For about the first two months I was stricken with the weirdest food cravings. I would crave food I didn't even like. I distinctly remember thinking "why in the hell am I craving KFC ...I don't even like KFC". Despite the nearly constant discomfort from being without the crap I had become accustomed to, I stuck with it convinced that somehow it would make a difference. I eventually became accustomed to my new diet/eating habits and the cravings/discomfort went away. Over the course of 8 months I managed to lose 40lbs. I attributed this mainly to my new diet habits and the fact that I walk to and from work every day. I don't live all that far from work, maybe a mile if I had to guess.

I was doing some reading about nutrition on the internet a few days ago and I somehow stumbled across a youtube video regarding weight training, fitness, and a bunch of other stuff that I didn't really understand. For whatever reason that video just kind of stuck in my head. I found myself wanting to actually go lift weights. I must admit that (until this morning) I had never set foot inside of a gym and the concept sort of intimidates me. I am a pretty smart guy and could totally imagine injuring myself by lifting improperly, or to excess. Needless to say I did not just "go work out". I started asking around about a place to work out, tried to find what people around me thought. I was recommended a local gym in town called Bellingham Fitness. I have a few friends that told me they work out there and like it. Due to my total lack of knowledge-all-things-fitness I got it in my head that a personal trainer would be a good way to learn the proper way to exercise. So, I stayed up late last night reading about this particular gyms offerings, programs, and whatever else I could find on the internet about them. At some point I decided it would be a good idea to get up early the next morning and go see what this place was about.

...cut to the f'n alarm screaming in my ear at 5:40am this morning...

So there I was, blurry eyed, and somewhat awake. I remembered I had set my alarm so early because I wanted to see if I could talk to someone at the gym about the possibility of becoming a member and what is involved in obtaining a personal trainer. I also remembered that they held some ungodly hours starting at 5am. Rolling over I grabbed my cell phone and dialed the gym's main listed phone number that was still on the safari screen. I totally didn't know what to expect, was I going to get some grumbly old guy that was pissed off that he had to work at 5am? Thankfully a perfectly polite person answered the phone. I told him that I had never been to a gym before and was wondering if he could give me any information. He told me to just come over, that someone could show me around, give me a tour of the gym's facilities, and even gave me the time one of the trainers was going to be in if I was interested in speaking with him. So I hauled my ass out of bed, took a shower (my way of waking up in the morning), got dressed, stared outside, thought "wheres the sun?", and hopped in my car.

I arrived at the gym and was a bit surprised to see that there were people there (the sun had JUST begun to rise after all). I found a large reception desk and was greeted by the attendant (I probably looked like I had no idea what I was doing there). I told him that I was the one who called earlier and he smiled and introduced me to the membership coordinator. He was perfectly polite and seemed enthusiastic about showing me the gym and its facilities. We walked around, he showed me all manner of hard wooded yoga rooms, one type of sauna, a large hottub/whirpool (which happened to be being serviced), a large wooden steam sauna, acres of bizarre looking gym equipment, a GIANT location full of all manner of things he called free weights, the locker room/shower, the tanning facilities, and a few other things. We went back to his desk and he asked me why I had arrived for a visit. I told him my story of dieting/weightloss, and that I was interested in building a regular weightlifting routine. I also told him that I have no gym experience, I didn't know what any of the equipment in the gym was for and that I hadn't even set foot inside a gym before this morning. I mentioned that I thought a personal trainer might be good for me, but I wasn't sure if personal trainers were only for elite athletes or something like that. He seemed impressed that I arrived at that strategy all by myself. He told me that that is an excellent way to start working out and learn about fitness. At that point he called over one of the personal trainers that had arrived and told him a bit about our interaction thus far. The trainer looked at me, introduced himself properly and asked me what I was looking for. I said that I didn't know, but I wanted to be fit, healthy, look good, and lift weights. He told me that if I was willing to put the effort forth I could achieve whatever I wanted to. We had a brief conversation regarding trainer scheduling details, and he left (I think he had someone to meet). I spoke with the members coordinator a bit more and long story short: I signed up for a gym membership.

We worked out the initial physical trainer details, and came to the conclusion that the individual I had previously spoken to would likely be an excellent fit for me.



So... tomorrow at 6pm, I am to meet my trainer for the first of our meetings.


I, for whatever reason, have decided to blog my fitness experience. I don't care if no more than 1 person ever reads this, it just seemed like a good idea at the time.