Group Training - 5/19/11

More group training last night. Gilles set up a couple cool circuits for us last night and i want to get them down before I forget them.

We started on the chest press machine. 10 reps at whatever weight he set for you. Then 20 resistance band bicep curls. Then 12 resistance band shoulder presses. Then 12 resistance band front raises and side raises. Then a 30-second v-sit as a bit of a rest. We went through that circuit 3 times.

Next circuit. Now we have a little rolling cart thing, and we're doing "tucks" or something. Basically, your toes go on the rolling cart platform, your hands or elbows go on the ground, and you pull your feet up under your body and then push them back out. Pretty tough, for sure. Then we did half-squat rows on the cable machine. Those weren't too bad. We also did quick, shallow dips on a ledge. My hands kept getting tingly, so I think I was pinching a nerve or something. Each station is 30 seconds, with a 10 second rest. We did 3 rounds of that as well.

To finish, we hit those range of motion stepper machines I've mentioned and worked on those for about 10 minutes. We alternated between just normal stepping and the "get low and pump your legs without moving your upper body" style stuff. That is really crazy hard. We did a number of 15 second bursts of that followed by 25 seconds of just regular stepping. We finished up with two 30-second bursts of the heavy duty work and then were done. It was a pretty serious workout. My legs were worn all the way out just from the 10 minutes we did, and my upper body was toast from all the rest. We got a lot of good core work in, too.

Overall, I'm really liking the group classes. Everyone is still super nice and having other people around is making me push myself harder for sure. I'm still learning tons of new exercises and all, so it's all really valuable. I'm thinking after a month of this, I may well be ready to start hitting the gym on my own 3x per week and be able to work up a solid hour worth of work for myself without anything getting stale. Woot!