My First Personal Training Session

Overall, I think I’m a pretty healthy person. I eat pretty healthy most of the time (with the exception of my sweet tooth, but all things in moderation, right?) and I go to the gym at least 2-3 times a week for cardio and weights. However, I typically do the same routine over and over and I don’t really push myself too hard.

I thought it might be a good idea to mix things up a bit and do something a little more to trim down and get in a little better shape before the wedding.

As a birthday present to myself I purchased a package of personal training sessions at my gym (it was a highly discounted summer deal). I picked my trainer (she’s awesome) and scheduled my first appointment for today, my birthday…it seemed fitting since it was my birthday present to me. It also seemed a little symbolic… a good way to start off a new year or something to that effect.

So I told my friend I couldn’t meet her for lunch today, I had an appointment with my trainer during my lunch break. She told me I was crazy…she may have been right. Here’s how it went:

I showed up for my appointment a few minutes early, excited and ready to go. But since you all are friends I’ll be honest, I was mostly excited because I thought today would be a nice and easy ‘intro’ session; kind of like the first day of class when you meet the professor, get the syllabus, and leave without actually having to learn anything or do anything. I thought my trainer and I would have a nice little chat about what I wanted, what my goals were, we’d fill out some paperwork and collect some starting data and then do a little light test workout…see doesn’t that sound fun? Well, that’s not really what happened.

She did collect some starting data and we did chat for just a bit. This is about how the chat went:

Trainer: “Do you run?”
Me: “No.”
Trainer: “Can you run or is there a reason you don’t run?”
Me: “I can run, I just don’t like to run.”
Trainer: “You’re going to run today. What cardio do you usually do?”
Me: “Treadmill with incline intervals and the bike on random intervals.”
Trainer: “You’re not doing the bike any more. What speed do you usually do on the treadmill and what’s the highest incline you usually get to in a typical workout?”
Me: “3.4/3.5 speed and usually 3 or 4 incline.”
Trainer: “Your new minimum speed is 3.8 and you can do the elliptical machines at (some minimum I don’t remember). Let’s get started”

We headed over to the treadmill and she started me off with my usual…for about 30 seconds. Then she started increasing speed and incline. It actually wasn’t so bad. She took it back down a bit and told me to get ready.

The speed started increasing and the incline started increasing. She told me I could hold on when the incline made it feel like I’d fall. The incline got steeper and steeper and I wasn’t holding on which seemed to impress my trainer, so she kept increasing the incline and the speed. I think I finally grabbed the handles at an incline of 12 (I have no idea what the speed was, to be honest I was trying to distract myself from the fact that I was running so I was looking out the window at cars in the parking lot).

My chest was burning, but my legs didn’t feel too bad. My trainer was very pleased and said she couldn’t believe how long it took me to grab the handles.

Side note: I LOVE Biggest Loser and Losing It with Jillian. I definitely did not want to be like the whiny and wimpy contestants, so I decided I would try and suck it up and push it as much as I could.

After we wrapped up on the treadmill the trainer gave me a couple minutes to catch my breath and grab a drink of water. The following exchange occurred:

Trainer: “How’re you doing? You look a little…”
Me: “I’m good, I just haven’t ran in a really long time.”

I really thought I was good, until…

She had me do some push-ups. After the push-ups I stood up and she started saying something, I don’t remember what, I interrupted her with, “I need to go to the restroom.”

Apparently, I am much more out of shape than I realized and I ate good healthy oatmeal for breakfast for nothing, what a waste*.

My trainer gave me some water, said she was happy I was willing to push it so hard, and sent me home for the day.

I guess it’s a good thing I signed up for a trainer, huh?

I will say that by the time I got home, I had 'recovered', and I felt great! Maybe just a little hungry ;)

I'll see her in a couple of days, it should go much better next time…


*The only other time a workout has ever made me sick was when I went through a speed training program in middle school…but I had had nachos at a class party shortly before my after school session so I think it had to do more with that than with the actual workout. I never got sick at two-a-days in high school. But then again, high school was quite a while ago.