The last 10 pounds

For the last three weeks, I’ve been meeting with a personal trainer two or three times per week.  In a previous post, I mentioned that I had just purchased a membership with a fitness club, 24 Hour Fitness, and have finally made progress in losing those last 10 pounds!  I just wanted to share exactly how we are doing it.

The sessions are 45 minute sessions, usually at 6 or 6:30 in the morning.  That’s when I have the best energy, evening workouts are just not so powerful.

My trainer, Justin, always, always works the core in as many different ways as you could imagine.  Here are some the things he’s taught me:

• Crunches using the exercise ball
• Dead man crunches where you balance on your arms and pull up your knees as you are suspended in the air
• The plank (where you balance on your elbows and just hold your body tight and straight for 20-25-30 seconds)
• Push ups (again holding your body straight)
• You sit and he throws you a four-pound ball and you catch it and twist from side to side, then throw it back
• You sit on your butt with your feet in the air and he just throws you the ball
• Arm exercises where instead of just standing on the ground, you’re standing on a balance ball

So, in other words, he continually finds ways to accomplish two or more objectives with one exercise, and he’s constantly working my mid-section and all the muscles that hold me up — glutes, back, obliques, abs, everything.

By the way, I could barely do five crunches when I first started, I had that old-lady midsection that is just poochy and droopy and has no muscles.  I was wanting to buy one of those Miracle Body Things where it’s a massive girdle that makes you look like you’ve lost two dress sizes.  Now, don’t need it!  After three weeks, I would say that I’m probably doing 60-100 crunches in various forms, as I mentioned above, in every workout.  I totally can’t believe it!

I show up at the gym at least 15 minutes early to perform various stretches that he’s shown me and to warm up for seven minutes on the bikes.  I used to try to come even earlier to do more exercises but I found pretty quickly my body just isn’t up for so much exercise so soon!

There are some things he does in every workout, like step ups, squats on the balance ball, and lunges across the gym.  And to keep my heart rate up, he’ll have me run around the gym pulling him behind me (he puts an exercise cord around my waist and runs a little slower behind me so I have to work harder).

Then, each workout is focused either on upper body or lower body.  So on the lower body days, we work on various lunge and squat machines with increasingly heavier weights.  You do them in sets of 12-15 and you don’t rest on that one machine.  You move to another exercise and run through several, then come back and do it again.  That way, you get two or three sets in but you don’t waste any time.

On the upper body days, gosh, there are just a ton of exercises. I have no upper body strength at all, no muscles, my upper arms have flab but no definition.  Well, had.  Yesterday I was showing off my new biceps!   Anyway, he has exercises where you are working the muscles in your back and shoulders as well as sideways exercises where you strengthen little muscles in your shoulders.

On the lower body days, those are harder workouts and I’ve frequently had to stop for a minute because I was feeling faint (turned out to be exercise-induced asthma, so I now have an inhaler), and he’s very accommodating of that.  I’m definitely getting stronger and stronger but hey, I was way out of shape and needed to work up to this slowly.

Even though I’m working hard with him two days a week for 45 minutes, I go on the off days to do the bikes and the circuit training and the stretches.  I definitely don’t workout as hard as when I’m with the trainer but it beats watching TV. 

As of April 28, 2008, I have progressed to the point of not only losing the last ten pounds but of training for a marathon as part of a fundraiser effort for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training.  To follow my progress or to learn how to go from being a non-athlete to a fit, trim, and healthy runner, see my blog at http://SheCanRun.wordpress.com.

As of July 5, 2008, I have now lost 15 pounds total and six inches off my waist, five inches off my hips.  The weight loss is not so much, now, but as we measure every two weeks, it’s so cool to see the body composition turning from fat to muscle!  The belly fat pooch is GONE.  The jiggly underarms that us older ladies hate — solid!  Seriously, everyone should take up some level of cardio several days a week, THAT’s what gets rid of belly fat.

And by the way, now that it’s been four months since I started working with a trainer, I want you to know that these are kick-butt workouts where I drip sweat!!  He no longer babies me.  We’ve figured out all my physical weaknesses and strengthened or dealt with them and he really PUSHES me!  I love it!  It’s not so much the weight loss that I love, it’s that it has made me look 20 years younger! Woo hoo!