PT and Hockey

On Friday morning I had my weekly torture session with Krissi. I got ready the night before, telling TB that I wasn't going to take my running jacket with me as there was no way I was going to run with Krissi after interval training. TB told me I was "soft" so I packed the running jacket and prayed for rain. The rain came during the night, so it was a warm 7 degrees when I arrived at Krissi's. Fortunately she'd decided against running, so it was off upstairs to the studio for the usual workout.

Lately we've been starting off with ten minutes on the stationary bike, followed by ten minutes of 1 minute fast, 1 minute recovery, then a final "flat out" minute just to make sure that I'm completely exhausted. I hated the workout the first time I did it. Fortunately, I described it to TB, who made me realise that I really hadn't tried that hard during the fast minutes. Since then I've tried to do less talking and more puffing. I still seem to have something left in the tank for the final minute, but I'm certainly working harder. Strangely enough, I'm enjoying the session more now that I'm trying. (I hope that the lack of entries lately means that Krissi has stopped reading my blog. Otherwise, I'm in big trouble next week.)

I've been doing squats with a barbell. I always thought I'd never do those, as they (a) don't look all that safe when you see people doing them at the gym and (b) looked way too hardcore for a princess like me. Doing them with Krissi spotting makes them seem much safer and I've learned that it's ok for a princess to be hardcore. It was quite amusing when we first started. I had trouble holding the bar straight. Krissi started me on a lower weight so that I could get the technique under control and so that she could check that my dodgy knee was tracking properly. I'm now doing them with 25 kg on the bar (approx 40 kg). I managed three sets without any trouble on Friday so I'm sure that the weight will be going up next time.

After the squats it was time to do hamstring curls. I do these with both trainers, so they are looking pretty good at the moment. I then did chest presses. I managed the first set of 12 by myself, the second set I got to about 10 on my own, and I faded out completely at 8 in the third set. I was disappointed in these a few weeks ago, but Krissi pointed out that I'd been doing upper body work at boot camp on Thursdays and so it was reasonable that I'd gone backwards. I can see the improvement happening again, but I'll be really pleased when I get three sets out without failing.

I had a bit of a laugh, as I told Krissi that I used to aim to get to six on my own in the second set and now I aim for eight. While I was telling her I could feel my face screw itself up into this determined expression that I'm pretty sure she doesn't normally see. I explained that the expression was how I looked on the inside when I was driving myself to reach the target. I realised that I didn't actually pull the face on the outside as all my concentration was focussed on lifting the bar.

Oh, Krissi gave me a tip for getting one or two more lifts out after I think I can't do any more. I do the chest press lying on the bench with my feet in the air. The idea is to keep my back flat and to stop me from arching my back to lift. When it gets tough, locking on my abs to lift my legs a little seems to give me the extra "oomph" to raise the bar. Sounds odd, but it definitely works.

I did three sets of lat pulldowns, concentrating on using my back and keeping my shoulders down. Then it was abs work. Instead of letting me off today, Krissi was picking on my form when I was doing the plank. I had to concentrate on keeping my butt down. My abs were burning. I'd already worked them hard and they did not want to cooperate. I was so glad to hear the timer go off after a minute. 24 crunches later (ordinary and oblique) I was hoping we'd finish but we repeated the combination one more time. It was a great session.

On Saturday afternoon I had a hockey match. The last time I played I drove over to the ground instead of walking. I realised that it meant that I'd missed out on my warmup. I live about 1 km from the ground, and the walk is just enough to loosen my muscles up. I've also started jogging around the ground before the game. There's only one other woman on the team who does this. We don't even go out for a hit up. We're pretty slack.

It was a good game. I got to do plenty of running as we were in attack a lot and then they would get a break so it was all systems go, sprinting back to the circle. We managed to win, which is always good. The weather held up for us too. The forecast had been for rain, but it held off, and it wasn't as cold as the last few games have been.

I had a relaxing Radox bath when I got home, then fell asleep on the couch. I was exhausted!

Today we wandered off to the Hall Markets. Not quite the Vic Markets, but enjoyable for all that. The rest of the weekend should be pretty quiet.

Oh, I've set myself a target to get to the gym three times a week to do cardio. I've been pretty slack about going to the gym. I figure I may as well make use of my membership. We'll see how it goes.