Boxing, weights and no running

The "no running" is because of the weather. It's been raining pretty steadily in Canberra for the past few days. It cleared for a while this afternoon, but it started raining again when I was heading home from work. I didn't manage to exercise at all yesterday. To my surprise I ended up feeling quite grumpy about that. I found myself trying to work out how I could fit a gym workout in between getting home and going to Trivia, but there just wasn't enough time to squeeze one in.

Today I headed off to the gym in the rain at 6 am for my personal training session. At least when I have an appointment I manage to get myself out of my toasty warm bed. I was delighted to find out boxing was on the cards. The warm up was pretty intense - two minutes of fast stepups, followed by running for a few minutes, then one minute of skipping and one minute of pushups. I did fine until the pushups. I'd manage to squeeze out five and then I couldn't catch my breath. I'd start again and lose my breath again. I had been feeling pretty proud of my cardio fitness up to that point, but I can see that there's definitely room for improvement.

The boxing is always fun. Today is was straight punches, high punches, uppercuts, combos (punch, punch, hook, uppercut), kicking, starjumps, 2 mins of fast punches, ab twists and crunches. I really struggled with the double crunch the other day, so I asked Leanne to review it with me. Silly me. That meant I ended up doing double crunches instead of ordinary crunches.

The last few weeks I've jumped on the treadmill after my pt session. I did that today, but I found myself standing there not knowing what I wanted to do. I eventually dialled up an aerobics session and was a couple of minutes into it when I realised I just didn't want to do it. I stopped, and headed home. I was beating myself up over it on the way home, when I realised that I'd just had an intense 30 minute workout with the boxing and I was probably too tired to enjoy the treadmill session.

After work I headed to the gym. I had my running gear with me, but I decided to do my weights program again. I really enjoyed my visit to the gym. I had a chat to Leslie, my old slim coach, about how I'm going with my weight loss. I'm really struggling with motivation at the moment. Leslie had good advice for me. I felt a lot more positive after talking to her tonight.

I worked through my program and, Celeste, I only had to wait for one machine to be free. Mind you, I nearly snapped at one lady - you'd think people could wait for a few seconds or say excuse me instead of practically stepping on you to grab their free weights. Not to mention the fact that if they dropped them it was my head that the weights would have fallen on. Just in case you're wondering, I was down on the floor putting weights onto a bar for my lunges.

As for my workout, it's definitely up a level. I'm still burning 4 cals/min instead of 3 cals/min. I don't know how much of that is due to the balancing. The biceps curls were quite an effort. By the end of the second set I was really struggling. They look so easy but that bent bar makes an enormous difference.

Another thing I've noticed is that I seem to be able to do the butt exercises. For ages, Leanne has been telling me to use my butt when I do squats and lunges. I've tried to, but I just haven't felt it there. Now that I'm doing the butt lift I can actually feel that I'm lifting my legs with my backside. One of my abs exercises works my butt too. On my way home I could feel that I'd been using it, so it looks like I've finally managed to work out what I should be doing. It's only taken me a couple of years!

The icebreaking is still happening at the gym, even though the challenge is over. There's one girl at the gym that I saw on the bus on the way home from work the other day. I've been wanting to say hello to her for ages, as she was one of the people who did a terrific job in the Biggest Loser competition. In fact, she came fourth overall. She's very shy and it's hard to make eye contact with her. I finally managed to say hello to her today and we had a chat on the way out of the gym too.

It must have been my day for talking to shy people. There's another woman who does the most amazing workouts. She's really fit and strong. The trainers work hard to challenge her and it's great fun to watch her workouts. Even though I often work out at the same time as her, we've probably only exchanged half a dozen words. I was filling in my card at the filing cabinet and I got out of her way, expecting her to just smile and move on, but she stopped for a chat today. Brief, but it was still a chat.

I got some really good service from one of the Fernwood ladies today. Her name is Cathy, so we often find the other staff giggling when we say hello to each other. This morning she noticed that I only seemed to have 3 pt sessions left and she was pretty sure I should have more than that. She phoned me to check that I hadn't cancelled them or used them up, and then she called head office and straightened it all out. An hour later she was back on the phone to me, telling me that I had 48 sessions. I thought it was great that she (a) noticed the problem and (b) fixed it before it impacted me. I'm going to have to call the manager and let her know how happy I am about that.