I scheduled my free session for lunchtime yesterday, figuring it would help get me into the habit of lunchtime gym work before my evening runs. When I arrived at the gym, the trainer, let's call him "Jim," took me over to the scale and then sat down with me at his café table/office space. He took me through what sounded like his standard speech on weight loss, diet, nutrition, cardio, etc. I tried to interject that really I was doing ok on nutrition, and great on cardio - I needed to learn how to work all those machines; I needed to figure out how to better work my core and upper body. I think at about this point is where it all went wrong. I mentioned that it would be nice to have some lower body work, just to sort of up my game in the hamstring and calf department.
Now Trainer Jim didn't seem like the sharpest tool in the shed, but I figured he took the requisite training classes to be a personal trainer (I have a cousin who did the same thing, and in hindsight also would not trust my fitness to my cousin, so I probably should have thought this through more).
Trainer Jim said we would start out with some leg work. Ok, I thought. I did my long run the previous evening, so I was kind of hurting, but surely a little leg work will be good for it. It's at about this point that I realized I forgot my watch and pretty much had no concept of time. "Starting with leg work" turned out to mean using a machine like this (the lady in this picture kind of looks like the gym's owner) or in the alternative, "we're going to work the sh*t out of your legs." 40 pounds, 4 sets of 15 reps. After the first set, I could feel it. That's when we did lunges from one end of the gym to the other. Then another set, then more lunges...you get the picture. All of this was followed by 8 different kinds of squats, then toe lifts, 75 of them. By this point I was sweating more than All the while I kept waiting. Where is the upper body I asked for? Why are we doing the same exercises that I cut out of my Women's Health and Fitness magazines? I could do all these things at home. Surely, this torture on my already tired legs will end any second, and we'll get to that core work and those mysterious machines in the main area of the gym. But then...it was over, and Trainer Jim was showing me my "Trainer Plan Options," starting at the low, low price of $160 a month to the reasonable $460 a month. On one hand, I got a really hard lower body workout, which I guess is good. Total outcome of 1 hour session with personal trainer: I missed last night's run and probably today's. But my coworkers' joy in seeing me hobble around the office and move like a geriatric? Priceless.
