Comfort Zone

Okay so can I just say I was worried about nothing, which is per typical. I spent so much time worrying, stressing and generally uneasy about my personal training. Why??? Who the fuck knows. Except that in this world if I have to think about it and take time to process odds are I’m going to rationalize the fuck out of the situation until I’ve beaten it to death in my brain and ultimately this leads to that uneasy feeling. Case in point, is my personal training sessions that finally officially happened last night. All that lead up and honestly it was so good. I am not going to say it was easy; because it was not easy and that is the whole damned point! I am too easy on myself, well, we all are, and we won’t make ourselves do things that are that damned hard or uncomfortable which is why we actually pay a lot of good money to have someone else make us work. Fucked up concept I know.

Wow, I am swearing a lot this morning, not sure what that is about. Anyhow. My training session was amazing. Thank goodness. Since I have fully committed myself for a year to lots of sessions it’s a good thing I actually loved it. I had really hoped I would because I would have been so frustrated if it was not everything I had hoped for. It was!

I started by “warming up” on the treadmill. I am not really supposed to run but I knew I wanted to elevate my heart rate before my session and she told me to always come warmed up. I only had about 20 minute’s tops, a little less. I get off work at 5 and my session was at 5:30, so I left work a few minutes early and hauled ass to the gym. I got on the treadmill and RAN.. yeah! I did a little over 2 miles in 18 minutes. Felt great. I was sufficiently ready to have my ass handed to me.

I walked over to her and she was like, you ready? She asked if I wanted to spend more time on the machines learning them or get right into some work and I was like, let’s just jump in and get it going. So she took me over to the bosu ball where we worked on core stuff. Basically lunges and planks and then weights. It was amazing actually. Certainly things I would not do on my own. Here are some interesting things. She was watching my heart rate monitor as I worked out. She said she found it fascinating because I am so conditioned for cardio that it was actually really interesting for her to watch my heart rate monitor go when I did other stuff. That she noticed when I was deep in challenging exercises that my heart rate could/would spike at like 170 but I’d pop up from the exercise and almost instantly my heart rate would drop back to a nice rate. That my recovery time was AMAZING; which was the cardio conditioning. She said she was super impressed. Sure, I didn’t know proper form but I picked it up pretty instantly and I went for it.

She said that she has lots of clients that don’t really want to work or don’t know how to work hard. That they don’t really know how to push themselves. She said based on my back story she knew I would not be one of those people that I am a person who sets my mind to something and I just do it. That she is so excited because I will just do it. And of course my favorite comment of the night, said after we finished our workout… “You are going to be challenge for me.” LOVE IT!!!! Not sure exactly what that means because I felt like I was dying during it; seriously but I did get my high. I felt amazing. Worth every penny.

Immediately following my class I jumped into a ½ hour cardio class with another trainer. And then immediately following that was cardio core class. By the end I was completely spent and could not possibly make my arms hold my weight any longer. When all was said and done in about 2 hours I burned 1,000 calories, but more importantly I did lots of other unusual stuff for my body that I am sure is going to benefit me in the end.

Bottom line is this; I am a crazy girl and my trainer knows it and appreciates that and I think it’s a good match actually. I felt completely at ease with her and yes I did want to please her as is my nature but sometimes that is a good thing. I want to be strong and fierce and work my ass off and make her proud. I know it’s just my personality that makes me want to behave that way but honestly it was SOOOO good. I could see how a few months of this kind of work would produce some results in my body unlike any I’ve seen previously. In all of my past almost 10 years of ups and downs I have never gone to this level. I have always ran and ran and ran and then quit. I have not found new challenges or highs aside from running which ultimately has always produced an end game for me. I love running so much and will never quit doing that but I know it has a life-span for me. It has a boredom factor that eventually sets in. Perhaps only running a couple times a week with all this other fun stuff mixed in will keep it ALL fresh and new. It will make me crave the running more which I have noticed and keep it new and exciting for me.

I am not as sore this morning as I thought I might be. We will see though. Tonight I plan to go to the gym and there is a 5:30 butts and guts class and then I’m on my own. Probably will run at least ½ an hour and then maybe some more strength training. I am loving the development of muscles in my arms. Granted they are not there yet at all but I feel a little something that was never there before and that is exciting. This is the challenge that I needed to keep me interested in all this.

I am fairly comfortable with my level of food intake in relation to exercise. I am honestly not super focused on what I eat, counting points etc, because I am so focused on getting stronger. Which I guess is good. I’m not sure I can really get the scale to move too much more these days so it really is just about maintaining the weight and not gaining. Of course as I continue to build muscle there is always the possibility that I will actually gain muscle weight. I don’t know. As long as my clothes keep fitting that is all that really matters.

I am not getting enough protein at all though and honestly have resorted to things like the protein powder and of course protein bars which I would normally shy away from because they are 5 points each but I guess I have a different purpose which is strength and health and with 20 grams of protein I think my body needs it. Funny how one day can wipe away the memories of a bad weekend. One extremely killer good workout and I feel great. Which is why I love exercise so much I guess.

I think this whole post goes to prove the reality that you really should push yourself beyond your comfort zone, past your own limits. I was SCARED, really scared to ever go down this path and I think it is actually exactly what I needed. Sometimes the things that scare you are the only things really worth doing. Even if you end up not loving it you will feel accomplished for having faced the fear.