Thursday 2 August 2007

Personal Training and Body Attack

This morning I had my personal training session. It was much warmer out and about this morning. It was 6 degrees when I left home and it only got down to 5. I wore a whole layer less of clothes so I didn't feel quite so much like the Michelin man on my way down the street. As the weather improves I can see that I'll become less obsessed with the recorded min or the "feels like" temperature. I have the Canberra weather page from The Age newspaper bookmarked in my favourites and I check it each night so that I know what to expect in the morning.

Mind you, I love my pt sessions, so it's never hard to get myself out of bed for them. I'm treating all my personal training sessions as doubly precious at the moment, as Leanne is leaving the gym at the end of August. That's not far away. I'm going to really miss working with her. It's been a terrific experience.

Now I have to think about establishing a relationship with a new trainer. While I know it will work out fine I can't help feeling a little nervous about it. There's the whole "Will they think I'm hopeless and wish they were working with someone else?" fear to deal with, as well as the usual "Will I like them? Will they like me? Will we work well together?" questions. I'd seen Leanne at work in the gym before she became my trainer, and I had all the same worries then. The reality has been so wonderful that now I have a new worry to add to the list. "What if my new trainer isn't half as good as Leanne?"

One of the things that I love about my pt sessions is that I end up laughing. I have a lot of fun with Leanne. This morning she had me doing a series of fitball exercises. It's amazing how much harder it is to do them when you're trying to balance. I would have been giggling if I hadn't been working so hard. Half way through the session Leanne asked me to guess what she'd been reading the night before - yes, a fitball exercise book. I'm thinking of getting her a book on siestas before my next session.

Over the past twelve months Leanne has been having various health problems. As she's very fit and works hard I think it's taken them a while to figure out what's wrong with her. Today she told me that she's been diagnosed with Crohn's disease. As she said, it's a better diagnosis than Bowel Cancer, which is what they were worried about when they did the tests. From what I've read, people can lead a normal life with medication, and are in good health when they aren't having a flare up. I don't know how much of a comfort that would be, as the symptoms don't sound like much fun. I hope she manages it well.

Aside: I find the Better Health Channel a great source of information for things like this. Our taxpayer dollars at work on something useful.

This evening I went back to Body Attack. I'd taken my gym gear to work, on the off-chance that I'd feel up to it, but I wasn't actually committed to doing it until I got to the gym. I was smarter this time. I had a bra with cross-over straps with me. As I was getting changed I remembered JoJo mentioning that she wore two bras, so I put my other sports bra back on with the straps in the regular position. I was so well strapped in, that the bouncing wasn't half the problem today. There were a lot of star jumps and I was glad I'd gone to the extra trouble.

I found it much easier today, as we did the same program that we did on Monday. I was able to put more effort into the various moves, and burned more calories as a result. My abs were sore. I've given them a good workout lately.

I've a busy weekend coming up. A very dear friend of mine is coming to vist me from Tasmania. We'll be doing a lot of sightseeing. I'm hoping she doesn't mind being taken around to all the highlights of my running career. I was thinking that it would be great to show her the Mother's Day Classic route, Red Hill, Lennox Gardens and so on. As she's a true friend, I'm sure she'll pretend to enjoy herself.

2 comments:

Andrew(ajh) said...

Don't stress too much over the new trainer, if you don't like them, go get another one !!

lg said...

Sounds like Leanne is a great trainer and motivator - Hope your next one is just as good!

I love the Better Health channel too! I came across it at work and have found some good stuff on it.