E's musings on life, tech and whatnot

At the gym

Remedial no more

So when I first started out with my new trainer (referred to as “the Young’n” here within) he took a look at my fitness and said “hmmm….you need conditioning” Ok, no one would mistake me for a tri-athlete, but really, can you tell me I’m not conditioned just be looking at me? 2 minutes into our first workout I knew exactly what he meant. When you’re seeing stars after 5min on a spin bike you have to start thinking that perhaps all is not well. 

I’ve been at the gym fairly regularly for 3yrs but apparently I have not been doing myself much good. This is sadly common. See, for more than 2yrs my old trainer and I had been working on weight training. Which turned out to be something of a joke as I only trained my weight to go in the opposite direction of my goals. It went up when I was ‘leaning” and down when I was “building”. Ain’t genetics great? In any case, I was totally focused on weight training not conditioning. Actually, I had no real idea what conditioning was. It sounded like something real jocks did for marathons or high-altitude mountain climbing. Certainly one did not need conditioning to sit in front of a computer 8hrs a day and play Halo at night. Right? Wrong. Turns out you do!  

Apparently, if you don’t condition your body to do the right things, it gets conditioned to do all the wrong things. Who knew? My body is currently conditioned to sit on my ass hunched over a monitor. My shoulders only roll forward and not back. My back only curves concave, not convex and my hamstrings are so tight they could double as banjo strings. Yet with all that, I was still happily bench-pressing, dead-lifting and power-squatting away. Then “the Young’n” adjusted my form so I was doing those exercises correctly.  Actually, to give my previous trainer his due, “the Young’n” adjust my correct form to be more correct (did I mention “the Young’n” has a degree in Kinesiology?). Frankly, with the adjustments, my exercises looked really stupid and felt really awkward, but low-and-behold, lifting half the weight kicked my butt twice as hard.

As humbling as remedial training was, it seems to be working. 2 months in, I can do a full body workout every other day that truly works my body and I now only start wheezing after 7 minutes on the spin bike. See? I’m soooo conditioned now.