rivka

I had my first workout today with my personal trainer. It went well. I didn't really know what to expect, in terms of how it would feel and how hard we'd be pushing my limits. She was careful to keep things at a level where I was putting out real work, but not feeling pain or completely exhausting myself. (She did warn me to expect pain tomorrow.) She asked me to rate each exercise on a scale of 1 to 10 according to how much work it was, and explained that we'll adjust reps and weights and so forth to keep my self-rated level of exertion between 4 and 5. She kept close tabs on how I was feeling and gave me lots of short breaks. In other words, I still like her.

Unintentional Comedy Moment, First Runner-Up:
Kelly: "You want to be able to see your toes when you do this."
Rivka: "Kelly, I haven't been able to see my toes since I grew out of a B-cup."

Unintentional Comedy Moment, World Champion:
Kelly, earnestly explaining why I should not use different weights with each arm: "You wouldn't want your arms to get uneven."

Details included here largely because I want to fix them in my mind:

We started out with 15 minutes on the exercise bike. Then she sat me on an enormous rubber ball and had me do a bunch of arm exercises with 3 pound weights: bicep curls with my left arm only, raising my arms to shoulder height in front and at the side, a triceps thing I'm not entirely clear how to describe, and something listed on my little sheet as "lat pulls on lunges," where she had me kneeling on one knee and bringing the same-side elbow straight back. (Finally, I was off the rubber ball! It hadn't seemed like a big deal at first, but once I started working with the weights the balance aspect became non-trivial. I definitely felt it in my back and stomach.) All of those were two sets, 12 reps each.

Then she brought out an aerobics step and had me do lunges: one foot up on the step, the other leg back, and trying to drop straight down. That was the hardest thing all hour. I had trouble figuring out exactly how I was supposed to move - I kept moving forward, instead of down - but it was also just hard. Only one set of those. Next was a sort of squatting motion, also straight down - as though I was starting to sit on a chair, and then changing my mind. Repeatedly. Hamstring raises: leaning against the wall on my left hand, standing on one foot and bending the other knee all the way up and then almost to the ground, one set of 12, then the other leg. Also hard.

Around this point, I volunteered the information that I have a lot of weakness with adduction. So she brought out a sort of an elastic band with handles at both ends, and had me step on it and hold the handles (picture a very unskilled jump-roper) and take single and double side steps. That was harder than it looked, and it was followed by side leg raises, still against the elastic band and then side bends, where I held both ends of the elastic in one hand and bent to the opposite side. And finally, the first and only foray onto one of the big intimidating exercise machines: lying down leg presses, at 25 pounds. Then we stretched: legs, arms, back, neck, sides.

"Am I going to do all of these things every time?" I asked her timidly.
"Well, I don't know. I might be adding more next week. I'll make you up a routine."