March 21 & 22: Hopping Off the Personal Training Train

So Thursday morning at the crack of dawn was my last official personal session with my trainer because of financial stuff. I'd pay her for the rest of my life if I could, but that lotto ticket still hasn't come through. I'm mostly worried that without the individual attention, I'll just stick to the same old stuff and not push myself. Or worse still, just not go to the gym in the morning. I'm driven, but I also go because I know that she's waiting for me. On my own, I might be tempted to hit snooze. I hope that's not the case, and will work hard not to make it the case, but its still a big concern. And I love my trainer. She's sweet and tough and knows exactly when to push me and when to pull back. She's really the best.

I still have some bootcamp time, but then I have to share My Kick-Ass Trainer with a few other girls. So knowing it was my last individual session, we decided to go out with a bang. She started with some normal burpees and lunges (though off a Bosu ball, just for kicks) and then took me out to the assisted pull-up machine... as she knows I need to do that for my Tough Mudder prep. Assisted sounds so nice because it takes away some of the weight, but pull-ups are damned hard, even with "help" and the fact that she had me do sets where one hand was forward and one hand was backwards only made it worse. In between pull-up sets, she had me do dips and then pushups off the little steps on the pull-up machine. I never thought I'd see a day where I was happy to do dips and pushups, as they were a relief. Then she had some fun with the resistance bands, make me do leg lifts and stuff, and then some general core work of full sit-ups to round things out. By the time I got to work, I could barely move my upper body.

But that didn't mean I was going to skip out on my Thursday night yoga class. It's my favorite night of the week, no way I'd miss that because of some sort muscles. Of course that class was heavy on the planks, which my sore forearms and shoulders didn't really care for, but had a lot of lunges and warrior 2 thrown in and held for ages, just for fun.

By the time my clock rang at 5 AM to rouse me for bootcamp, I had all I could do to roll out of bed. And I headed into bootcamp stiff as a board, but after the first 50 jumping jacks or so, I started to loosen up, and then she put us through our paces with lots of jumping, walkouts, burpee variations and planks. So many planks. It's gotten to the point where I'd kill to do crunches instead. As long as this means that someday I'll have a flat enough stomach and have the nerve to wear just a sports bra and shorts while running.... it will all have been worth it.