Cracks in the Seams of Self-Confidence - Push It day four

Pushing it is hard work - thought you would want to know.

I need to write about my daughter, but I'm under serious time constraints here from pushing it.

Yesterday I got an email from NoNeed, her full name is No Need for an Assessment but my typing skills aren't up to that challenge.

NoNeed writes:

Okay, I'm feeling sorry for you because no one is giving you any feedback on your request.

I think pretty much any AC-DC song is just great during a workout, and I really don't like AC-DC any other time. I guess I can relate to Angus's screaming better while I'm in pain myself. Their driving beat really gets you going. Try jumping rope to Thunderstruck sometime and see what I mean. Van Halen is okay too, and I would never listen to them otherwise.

Well the thought of me jumping rope is pretty funny, NoNeed obviously hasn't seen my attempts at lunges, ballerina that I am. Still, what the heck, I might as well try jumping rope sometime, maybe my daughter can teach me, and why not to Thunderstruck? I couldn't find the song on iTunes but I bet I can at the library.

I hope to receive more pity emails from my loyal and faithful readers!

Thanks NoNeed!!!

Today I did forty-five minutes of intervals on the treadmill at a work pace of 3.8 5% incline, rest of 3 1.5% incline. I was timing it so that I could take this fifteen minute Abs course that my trainer offered at seven and feeling pretty full of myself. I finished up about fifteen minutes before class, stretch and wander around feeling sort of bored. The high-light song being Blister in the Sun by The Violent Femmes since I was on the treadmill.

When I'm out walking I strut my stuff yeah I'm so strung out

I walk into the gym and catch the TOSRVs performing unnatural acts with lunges, doing them opposite from the way I do on-step db lunges so that they can drop their knee even further!

Concerned I flee to my trainer, I never pass on an opportunity to rat someone out, "You would not BELIEVE what's going on in the gym!"

I describe the horrors I witnessed, trailing off at my trainers bored stare...

She replies, "Yes I know, I designed those routines for them."

I wander off, trying not to run screaming at what horrors await if I continue to exercise.

The ABS class is offered every Tues/Thurs from 7-7:15am. It's billed as, "Drop in on a short break or during your workout for a great 15 minute abs session."

I'm so full of myself, so filled with arrogance that I'm certain I can go fifteen minutes, no problem. Somewhere around the five minute mark I just want to take my ball and go home! My first heads up that there was going to be trouble was the folk strolling into the gym with big rubber balls and mats. The TOSRVs were there and a FNG (what am I saying? I'm a FNG! Well he's new to me) and about five minutes late or so TireTosser strolls in too. And then me, oh boy.

I'm going to have to attempt the course a few more times before I can adequately explain how seriously tough those fifteen minutes are and the inventive things my trainer has one do with those big rubber balls (technical term is 'Fitness Ball' I believe).

One of the things you're suppose to do with the fitness ball is lay on your back, hold it between your ankles, lift it up so that your legs are straight and perpendicular with your body and then do things with it that strengthen your abs. Tossing it over your head across the gym when it slips out from your ankles and running after it giggling is not part of the routine!

When instructed to sit on the ball at about the 45 degree mark and lay back on it, having it shoot out from under your butt while flopping on the floor like a fish while the rest of the class giggles and your instructor asks, "Are you OK Bill?!" is not part of the routine.

When I finally mastered that and laid back I could do nothing. I simply didn't have the strength to do what the trainer was asking.

With about five minutes to go I bagged it and just sat on my ball watching the big kids play, feeling kinda sulky about it but also realizing if I continue to 'push it' or at least show up next Tuesday, I might do a little better.

Wanna know a secret? My belt went in a notch - it's a precarious situation an ebb and flow kind of thing, lets see if I can keep it there :-)

As I close I just received a list of songs from my trainer, I'll post them tomorrow and start the sidebar for them.