Personal Torture Session

Yesterday I was in such a bad mood that even I couldn’t stand the sound of my own voice and therefore couldn’t stomach writing anything out. I was just plain old pissy and it took me until late afternoon to have my ah-ha moment. I started my period. Made total sense suddenly. I was just sad and depressed and lacked any motivation at all and then I realized the why of it all and my entire attitude changed. I was not crazy and sad for no good reason. Yes, I was, but no, my hormones really were fucking with me. Don’t you just love being a woman sometimes?

I had little desire to go to the gym but I had personal training last night and I don’t miss that. So it turned out my trainer was running late so she asked another trainer to cover her and do my session. This was fine, because this is my favorite instructor and my friend, Amanda. My trainer is on vacation next week so Amanda will be doing my training next week anyway. This seemed fine and logical in my brain but then we started and holy shit, this girl is so fucking hard. I adore her and it’s great for classes where you are not the sole focus of all the attention but in a one on one setting I seriously have never felt more exhaustion or pain in my life. I feel like my trainer pushes me and I have great workout’s where I’m left to the point of exhaustion but Amanda. I can’t even describe what the hell happened there. Part of me thinks that this girl this I am stronger and more able than I am. That she thinks I should be able to keep up with her insane level and I just can’t. I am so much stronger than I ever was but I am not THAT strong.

Normally I love being challenged and ultimately I do, but I have never been so close to being on the verge of tears and wanting to quit. I don’t quit but I seriously almost did. What starts out as easy enough escalates into something so awful I can’t even describe it. Okay, I am being overdramatic I am sure. But I found little joy in the workout because I felt not good enough.

She had me lift much heavier than I’ve ever done before. She had me start with 10 incline push-ups. Yup, feet up on a bench and then hands on the ground pushing myself up. Arms already hurt after that. Then bench presses. 50 pounds to start. 15 of them. Oh wait, 10 more incline pushups while she loads on another 20 pounds of weight. Sure, let’s do 12 reps of 70 pounds pressed. I barely inked them out. Then you guessed it, 10 more pushups. And if I thought that 70 pounds was hard for good measure she added another 20 pounds so that I was now chest pressing 90 pounds. The most I have ever done was 50 pounds once a couple weeks ago with my regular trainer. Otherwise 40 is what I comfortably do. I guess that is the point, to get out of your comfort zone. She had me push thru 10 of those and I seriously felt like my arms were going to fall off. And then for good measure to exhaust my arms as she said she took all the weight off and had me do as many presses as I could with just the 40 pound bar. I could barely manage the 10 she wanted. I felt like an epic fail mostly.

Then we went to tricep dips with a 35 pound weight on me. Tricep dips are ridiculously hard. WITHOUT weight. This might be the exercise where I most thought I was going to quit. It burned and I could not really do it. Then we did some more tricep work and lifts on the bench that I can’t even describe before working on my biceps.

Let me tell you, I can only manage a 30 pound bicep curl consistently. That is what I do, where I’m comfortable. I do 15 of them and that is good. When we go to the rack of bars so stood there and studied them before deciding that I was going to bicep curl 60 pounds. I laughed. Seriously said, you are kidding me right, I can’t curl 60 pounds. She said I’ll help you. And it was pain and torture and with her help we did 10 of them. And then we went to the 50 pound bar and again we did 10. And then to 40 pounds, and then the 30 pound one and then we settled on the 20 pound one where we had a new series of tortures. 10 lower ½ ones and then 10 upper half ones and then for good measure I had to hold the 20 pound bar out straight for 20 seconds while it burned every ounce of my being. At this point I was about ½ done with my workout. Yup… half done. And I wanted to cry but kept smiling.

So now it was leg torture time. What do you normally lunge with she asked me. 40 pounds was my response knowing I could probably do 50 thinking that’s what we’d do. Who was I kidding; it was 70 pounds that I had to lunge with on my back across the gym. My legs were sad. They were mad at me. And then because that is not torture enough we did some machine that I shall forever call the machine of torture that isolated my front thighs in the most excruciating pain to date. This is where I made noises I did not know I was capable of making and when I got to rep 5 out of 10 I was at my breaking point and was already screaming in pain but I still had 5 to go. This is what torture is. Right there. It wasn’t like I’m breaking something kind of pain, it was just the pain of holy shit I have worked muscles to their ridiculous point of exhaustion. I am sure this is what you are probably supposed to do.

In this instance, AFTER my 30 minutes of personal torture was done I realized that I have not been pushing myself nearly as hard as I could because I never felt that level of fatigue or done before. I never actually wanted the pain to stop as badly as I did last night. That is what it’s probably supposed to feel like. But it wasn’t that satisfying. I felt like a failure in some weird way because I felt like I couldn’t do what she wanted me to do, or do it with ease at least. I guess each trainer has a different teaching style. Which is why I am all the more confident that my trainer Julie is a good fit for me. She pushes me but also is nurturing and understanding. But I will train again next week with Amanda and die I am sure.

After my personal torture session I did do a half hour ab class followed by half an hour of turbokick where promptly upon its completion I was like, I am DONE. I am out of here; I can’t take any more of this. Today I am sore. Not crazy can’t move sore, just sore in a few places. I guess a good kind of sore. The kind of sore where I worked all these stupid muscles and it hurts like a son of a bitch to “think” about what I did but I could and will power thru.

Tonight I will be back at the gym, with my sore body and all, and do a 5:30 cardio class with Amanda. I really do love the girl maybe just not one on one but as a person, as an instructor she is great. Then at 6 PM there is a new iron power strength training class starting tonight for an hour. I will do that. I will have to go lighter on the weights since I am already in pain. Just push thru today and then tomorrow is my day off and I will get my nails done.

Have I mentioned that Sunday night is my Pink concert? Yup, I am pretty thrilled about that. I will probably write more about that tomorrow since its Friday and all and boy am I looking forward to my Friday and my 3 day weekend. I have to take Monday off work because I will be out til like Midnight in Seattle so there was no way I doing the 4 hour drive home after that and going to work. Not going to happen.

I feel like I have more to say but the I don’t as well. I have had some things on my brain this week. Between therapy leaving me yucky Monday night and apparently the arrival of my period I’ve kind of been a mess the past couple days. Just want to check out and go into auto pilot. We all have those times. It’s just all I can do to go thru the motions and get my exercise in and not really delve too deep into any other tough emotions right now. I am sure next week I will be back to my regular old self. But for now that’s what I’m up to.