Dirt in your skirt blog

Day 129… Back in the Gym

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Margaret Schlachter

I have been bad, no horrible about writing recently. Sleep deprivation training aka crewing for the double and triple took more out of me than I thought, no that’s an excuse. I have just been tired and lazy, life took over for a while, but I’m back. The trouble about getting backed up on days is it takes longer to remember what you actually did. But here we go…
 

Thursday, not the normal day, but we are still working out what the normal day will be with my trainer. I showed up to the gym to meet Steve on a Thursday this week, still tired from the weekend and hips a little sore from all the running on the pavement. Without much chit chat we set off on today’s adventure in the gym.

 

These workouts are always fun to read so I will try to recreate Steve’s madness. We started off the session with a trip bouldering around the gym. I finally made it past the whale (a tough section of the gym) for the first time ever. After finishing a bouldering session around the gym, which I was followed the whole time by about an 8 year old girl who I think was part monkey as she had no problems making her way around the gym after that we started the workout.
 

This part started off with picking up a 50lb sandbag and carrying it across the gym and placing it on a futon mattress also used as a crash pad. Then we moved into push-ups (10 the first set, then 8, then 6, 4, 2) after push-ups (which where done one legged) we moved into three negative pull-ups on a large hold (no bars here). I next picked up the sides of the futon with the sandbag and dragged it back across the gym finishing up the set with 10 burpees and another bouldering session. We did 5 sets each time decreasing the burpees and push-ups by 2 everything else stayed the same. When I got near the end Steve proclaimed to another patron in the gym, “She is almost done with her warm-up.”
 

I love these workouts because nothing in them is particularly hard on it’s own, however when layered together it’s a whole other story and humbles me each session. Part two of our workout involved a PVC pipe full of sand weighing about 30lbs, a balance ball, and my stubbornness. I sat on the ball balancing myself and had to complete 100 overhead presses. I could rest when I wanted but to goal was to do as many as possible before I got to that point. I pushed out the first 40 before my first rest was needed, for a rest I got 60 seconds (the remaining number of reps). I pushed out another 20 (40 second rest) then another 15 (25 second rest) 10 more, than finally the last 15. I took a 2 minute break then was right into 30 dips with my feet balanced on the balance ball.
 

We finished up our day with me holding myself on the wall for a total of 5 minutes. I only came off twice in those five minutes and I can honestly say the last 30 seconds I had to dig deep and find a happy place to make it towards the end. It was no longer about the muscles twitching from exhaustion it was my brain wanting to call it for the day.

After we finished the session and I tried to grab my water my whole arms were twitching and my lats were burning from the workout. Again I left the gym with a huge smile on my face and doubts at how useful my arms would be on Friday. Love my time at Green Mountain Rock Climbing!