First Personal Training Session - 3/31/11

Had my first personal training session at the new gym. It was awesome! Did mostly bodyweight exercises, worked myself really hard, and learned a lot. I feel like I have a much clearer picture now of where I am, where I want to be and how to get there. I'm really glad that I'm doing this to develop a strong foundation before I start going nuts with the training. I need a lot of work on technique and my core before I'm ready to work as hard as I'd like without injuring myself.

Here's some of what I did:

6 minutes on a treadmill at about 10 min/mi to warmup
Stretching my glutes, hamstrings and calves. They are crazy tight and that's one thing I really need to work on.
Back on a treadmill to get my heart rate back up. Started at 3.5 mph, incline of 2.0 and increase incline by 1 every minute. By the time I reached 15, I was really huffing and puffing.
Did some circuit work. Pushups for 30 seconds, then plank for 30 seconds, then bicep curls for 30 seconds, then jumping back and forth over a rope for 30 seconds, then hold a v-up for 30 seconds while catching a medicine ball, touching it to the right and left twice, then throwing it back, all without letting my feet touch the ground. Then rest. Then all that again, plus a sort of half squat low row thing for 30 seconds.
Weighted squats on a machine. This was partially for strength and partially a diagnostic so the trainer could see how my technique looked and see if I was forcing my body to do weird things to compensate for muscle weaknesses. I did pretty well with it. 12 reps at 50 pounds, then 12 at 100, then 12 at 160. After the last set, the headrush and leg wobbliness almost put me on the floor.
After that, we did a balance exercise. He had some foam rods cut in half and had me stand on one (flat side up) with one foot for 30 seconds, then switch. Then do it again, but then he bounced a medicine ball to me and I had to catch it and bounce it back to him without touching. After the squats, this was really tough,
Finally, stretching again. The same stretches to cool myself down a bit.

I think I remembered it all. It was a heck of a workout. Even the strength training stuff kept my heartrate high. He said that every workout should incorporate four elements: Core, Strength, Cardio and Stability. We hit all of them to varying degrees, and it's cool to have a guide to be able to start thinking about what to do for my own workouts. I also got to use my Garmin HRM for the first time during a real workout. I'm going to have to see how that worked out for me. I still don't really understand the workings of that thing very well.

More soon!