Personal trainer or personal torturer?
I've been in agony all day today. Not because the pro-gun lobby got to me after yesterday's blog, thankfully. But because I signed up for a personal training "starter pack" at my gym, which gave me three one-on-one sessions at a low, low price. I figured I'd give it a go, and see if it made me get any closer from being desperately unfit to my long-term goal of being mildly unfit.
The first session was very light - it only involved a simple fitness test. Which I think it's fair to say I comprehensively failed. Apparently I have the physical condition of a retiree. And no, I'm not exaggerating.
So I approached the second test with considerable trepidation. I felt my my fragile physical self-esteem couldn't take another battering. Turns out it could. Because today, we learned just how easily I get exhausted. My trainer devised a simple circuit, with ten repetitions of each activity. Nothing particularly challenging –just a bit of stretching, sit ups and a bit of mucking around on a weight machine where you have to pull yourself and then push yourself up. A mere ten repetitions of each activity was all I had to do.
Well, to cut a short story even shorter, I got through the circuit twice. Yeah, that's not a very high number.
Shortly after I left the gym/medieval torture chamber, my muscles began aching. I'm not sure which muscles exactly, but I think I can approximately estimate that it was all of them. Muscles I didn't even know I had were announcing their presence extremely emphatically. I made it as far as the nearest cafe, where I ate a meal which probably more than undid what little good work I'd done at the gym. And then I took myself home (for the glamorous life of a Fairfax blogger is such that they don't actually let you into the building) and writhed in agony on my bed for quite some time.
Which is quite a lengthy excuse for why this blog was late. I could scarcely move. Now, I'm able to muster up a slow hobble.
But the experience made me wonder whether I'm an absolutely terrible case, or whether this is just normal for those who lead fairly sedentary lifestyles. I really hope it's the latter, but I suspect it's the former.
It's going to be a long road between here and physical respectability. And I fear this may not be the only occasion on which regular readers of this blog get to hear me whinge about it. Sorry about that – next time I'll get back to complaining about the world in general, instead of the small (but not small enough) portion of it that constitutes my body.