Wanna box?

On Tuesday, I had my second session with my personal trainer and it proved to me that I made the right choice to hire someone to help me.  I need variety in my workouts and he delivered.  I need to be pushed harder than I would push myself and he absolutely delivered.  I need cardio and strength training that can make me work hard despite my limitations, and once again, he delivered!

We boxed the entire session.  He put 1 lb gloves on me and it was ON.  He grabbed his

mit/pad things and we sparred until my arms were ready to fall off.  He would hold the pads to the sides and have me cross punch them, then he’d move them in different places making me cross and pivot to reach out further to the sides, or upper cut punch, or hook.  I was determined to make every single punch just as forceful as the next because I didn’t want to slack OR have him think that I was slacking.  He could feel every single punch and how hard I was working. 

Just when I thought I couldn’t throw one more punch and I started to wonder if this was literally the only thing we were going to be doing the entire time, he told me to drop and give him 10.  I looked at him like he was crazy.  My arms were about to fall off and he was telling me to do pushups?  I summoned up every last morsel of strength I could muster and got in 10 really good pushups.  He congratulated me on my progress (I’ve been practicing my pushups, cuz I really suck at them) and then told me to do a 30 second plank.  This actually felt like a rest for the first 5 seconds… like I could finally catch my breath, and then rigamortis began to set in… On second 28-29 of torture he piped in “once you hit 30 seconds you’re going to jump up swinging!”  Oh, I was going to swing alright… He was pissing me off now!  As soon as I heard “30!” I sprung up and cross punched his left pad that wasn’t quite ready for me.  He stumbled back and tried to recover saying, “Shit, you really did come up swinging!” 

We continued this workout doing sets of intense boxing followed by different plyometrics exercises such as: 

1.)    5 squats, 30 seconds squat hold, 5 squats, 30 seconds squat hold.

2.)    Push-ups, plank

3.)    Wall sits- toes up, toes flat, toes up, toes down (I don’t know why raising your toes makes it harder… try it and let me know what you think.)

On a few boxing sets he told me to duck after so many swings.  At one point he said, “ok now instead of ducking after two punches from each side, you’re going to duck after three!”  One set went great, then the second set he miscounted and I almost got decked and I yelled “YOU REALLY ARE TRYING TO KILL ME!”  At least my reflexes were on point!

I was drenched in sweat and exhausted, but I had just had so much fun working out.  The half hour FLEW by even though towards the end I could barely lift my arms.  My sets of pushups were decreased to 5 each because it was a MAJOR struggle.  When he and the other trainer who had stopped to watch me both offered me high fives, I considered head butting them instead.  I had to manipulate my body in a way so I could swing my arm up to reach their outstretched high five.  You can’t just leave them hanging, but my arms were begging me to leave THEM hanging.

I finally got to the locker room and cursed myself for hanging my jacket in an upper locker… how the HELL was I expected to get it down?  If there was another woman in the locker room at that moment I would have asked her to put my jacket on for me and zip it-no joke.  I laid my jacket out on the bench, sat down in front of it, slide my right arm into the sleeve, maneuvered my left arm and shoulder into the other sleeve by laying my body down and doing a rolling type motion, much like how my dog looks when he’s rolling in something nasty.  I felt like a champion.  Once I got into the car I sat for 5 minutes sipping water willing myself not to throw up before I drove home (which also proved to be quite the feat).

It is now Friday and I can finally lift my arms up comfortably to type, drive, itch my nose, eat, drink and everything else you do with your arms.  This may sound totally idiotic, but you use your arms to do EVERYTHING!  EV-RY-THING!