I was really excited to see a gym opening in the shopping center next to my house. To be honest, although I talk the health & fitness talk, I haven't exactly been walking the walk.
Here's the thing...I hate the gym. When the weather is good I love to walk, to ride, to lift 25 bags of mulch, whatever, to be out in the sun. When the weather sucks...cold, wet, dreary...I hibernate. It goes against every natural inclination I have to haul myself back out to the gym after work. I tried working out at home but I don't stick with it consistantly. (My best home-based workout involved a physio ball and televised hockey...when play was on, I bounced. When play stopped, I stopped. It actually worked pretty well, but I got a little too excited during a breakway once and didn't notice that the ball had rolled, and instead of bouncing I crashed painfully to the floor...hard to explain that injury.)
Anyway, the gym next door turned out to be one of those 30-minute workout, women-only places with a circle of hydraulic resistance machines. I was bummed; that seemed too much like a step backward. I mean, as much as I'm not a gym fan, I was in pretty decent shape once, and I'm not scared to move weight plates.
On the other hand...for the last several months I have been doing nothing. I decided to check the quickie place out, since something is better than nothing and it is five minutes from the house. I went up tonight, and the first person I saw was my neighbor, an older lady who has had a couple of heart attacks. Hard to believe I could get a decent workout on the same routine she uses.
Cut to the chase, I decided to give it a shot anyway. The focus of this place isn't really strength training, despite the resistance machines, it is cardiovascular conditioning. For the whole 30 minutes you keep your target heart rate up (they encourage heart rate monitors), and frankly, cardio is my weakest point. The resistance with the hydraulic machines felt almost absurdly light when I first tried them, but I was moving like I was lifting weights, slow and controlled. You aren't supposed to flail around uncontrollably while you use the machines, but you are supposed to do as many reps as you can in 30 seconds, then move on.
I did a test circuit and realized it was work. I go in Saturday to be weighed and measured and get started. I don't expect to lose weight (in fact, if I were to go back to real strength training, I'd gain weight; I'm ten pounds lighter than I was at my most fit) but I'll be happy if my jeans fit a bit better. The quickie gym may not be the best but it's better than plopping my butt in front of the computer as soon as I get home, and I had one other reason for joining, the same reason I did the AIDS Ride, and the Race for the Cure, and all the other health-related charity 5Ks...
they gave me a free t-shirt.
Posted by Nic at January 15, 2004 07:11 PM | TrackBack