Monday morning, when I arrive at the gym for my training session with Jackie, it will have been about a month since I’ve seen her. It has been a series of almost comedic roadblocks in our way from mid-February until now.
One day we were snowed in, then she got the flu, then I got a chest cold, then I had a doctor’s appointment, and last week she was on spring break. It’s as if the fitness gods are against us.
Luckily, she’s got a pretty darn good student, if I do say so myself. I’ve stuck with the program, and I started taking Step classes at the Y to make sure the workout intensity stayed high. Other days I went to the Life Center like a good girl to make sure I put in my five hours of exercise per week.
The component that has been missing is the strength-training. A couple of days I went into the weight room and put together some circuits that I remembered from training with Jackie. But I’m nervous that it won’t be enough to have sustained the level of strength I achieved with her the first six weeks.
I made an attempt today to try a class in the upstairs studio that I thought focused more on strength. But after watching for just 30 seconds, I headed downstairs to the Life Center. I didn’t see anyone with weights, just mats and Bosus, and just two minutes in, they were doing mountain-climbers and other high-impact cardio moves that didn’t have much to do with strength-training.
And, honestly, moves like mountain-climbers and burpees will not be a part of my life much longer. When my sessions with Jackie are over, so are my mountain-climbing days on the Bosu. So I wasn’t about to take a class where those kinds of exercises are emphasized if I had a choice in the matter.
I said these exact words to someone, and she responded, “You’ve got to keep pushing yourself. If you don’t like doing something, maybe that’s exactly the exercise that will be most effective for you.”
I can see her point. On the other hand, if the goal is “lifestyle change,” then I want to find exercises that work for me and that I can incorporate into my routine consistently. If I dread doing something, I won’t keep doing it. Plus, there are plenty of other cardio exercises that get your heart rate up, which is the whole point of a dumb ol’ burpee, anyway.
I still got a solid month left of them, though. And something tells me, if Jackie reads this column, I’ll be bouncing around on that Bosu good and plenty on Monday morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment