My appointment with the personal trainer at Fitness19 was this morning. I thought it went really well, but the true test will be doing those exercises, in the future, without him there to guide me and correct my form. If we had extra money just laying around asking to be spent, I would absolutely buy some sessions, but it’s just not to be right now, so what I got is better than nothing, right?

We started out talking about my goals and then he developed a plan of action for me. A full body workout (strength training) that should take no more than a 1/2 hour (3 full circuits with 15 reps on each machine), then another 1/2 hour of cardio, 3x a week, never on back-to-back days. On the off days, just do cardio.

I’m going to shoot for cardio only days on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays (Zumba=cardio!) and the full body workouts on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Sundays I will rest.

For when I do cardio at the gym, he gave me the option of doing either the treadmill or the elliptical trainer. The stationary bike was not an option, because he said you should never do cardio sitting down; it should really only be used for rehabbing. I don’t really enjoy it anyway, so no big deal. The treadmill has always been my cardio machine of choice, but the elliptical, ugh. I just look at it and hurt.

He says if I don’t want to do it, no big deal, as the treadmill is very effective. But he likes the elliptical because it’s basically NO impact – it doesn’t get much better for working your heart and lungs without stressing your body than that. So, of course, I want to give it another try. I think the last time I got on one was probably 1998 and I literally didn’t make it 5 minutes before I thought I would just collapse.

He explained that because there is no impact and you just glide, most people get on it and go WAY too fast and then they can’t go very far. He said I shouldn’t be going any faster on it than on the treadmill. So, I got on and did 3 minutes at about 3.5 mph. My thighs were burning. They do NOT burn after 3 minutes on the treadmill. He said it’s because the treadmill is obviously using the same muscles you use all day long, whereas the motion of the elliptical uses different muscles. Ok, so that sounds to me like it will be more effective. Let’s give it a shot. We finished up our session and I went back and did 15 more minutes on it!! I know that may not sound like a lot, but for me it was and I felt victorious!

So tomorrow I plan to start my full body workout. He took me through a few reps on each machine, just to show me proper form, etc. Tomorrow will be 15 reps on each machine for the 3 full circuits and then the 30 minutes of cardio.

Think I’ll be back here tomorrow shedding tears?

Oh, and I was down another 2.2 lbs this morning, so now I’m only up 3 lbs from last Friday.