One ex told his mom – several years ago – that I “had a butt you could bounce a quarter off of.” Clearly, I wasn’t entirely through puberty at the time. And I was still wearing boy-sized soccer shorts.
Obviously this is no longer the case. But I checked the back of me again this morning, just to be sure. (See Soreness Inventory – Week 1 for more.) After one whole week of working out, my butt isn’t yet back to exceptional.
But to be fair to the scientists and nutritionists and women’s fitness magazines – one can’t expect to get rid of all one’s cellulite and desk-chair spread in a week. So I met up with my hot trainer again. Both Saturday and Sunday.
Saturday went fairly well…if you don’t count the warm up, the shoulder exercises, or the ab workout (which collectively accounted for 89.3%). And since exhibiting weakness is a sure-fire way to get my trainer to repeatedly target the same area, my lower abs landed in the hot seat this weekend…thanks to last weekend’s poor performance.
I laid on my back. Grabbed the trainer’s heels. Lifted my feet to the skies, and waited for him to throw my legs back to the ground. I stopped my own legs from losing their fight against gravity. Pulled them up to to the skies again (while keeping my lumbar spine flush against the grass). Then repeated. And repeated. And repeated. Along the way we worked in shoulder presses, bicep curls, and deltoid something-or-others. But it was the abs that were all-consuming.
Hot trainer got frustrated because my feet wouldn’t stay aligned, my legs didn’t stay extended. My breathing wasn’t consistent and my enthusiasm wasn’t present. I got frustrated because he was frustrated. And also because I have definitely been eating too many quesadillas lately. Along with accompanying beers.
Saturday’s personal takeaways included: My right rear deltoid is still amazingly weak. My back is so confused it can’t even stretch correctly. Hot trainer drives an Acura. And my lower abs and hip flexors were NOT excited about all this individual attention.
Sunday morning I rolled myself out of bed. Literally. (Hip flexors, in case you didn’t realize, are very important in the sitting up process.) I made it to training. Barely. And found out today was a leg day.
Somehow the warmup included all the most challenging pieces we’d avoided the day before: 200m – each -of high jumps (knees up, arms up, feet WAY off the ground), high knees (arms extended in front like a lost zombie, knees and thighs attempting to touch the zombie arms), and something similar to skipping. Plus running backwards. My overexerted hip flexors were fatigued before we finished recapping our respective Saturday activities.
Then we moved on to legs (of course). Donkey kicks, lunges, side steps, side lunges. All exercises concentrated on the lower core. All relied on abs and hip flexors. All nearly killed me.
But at the same time, I loved every excercise; they were intended to extinguish my spread and my cellulite. It was worth more BBQ skewers through my glutes.
That was Sunday.
Today is Monday.
I spent most of today frozen in my office chair, unable to stand upright. Any walking had to be done sans heels. I realized I had a gaping hole in my stocking. Toward evening I attempted an easy run…yet found myself confronted with a feeling reminiscent of days when my brothers and I would hang vice-grip pliers from various body parts. The vice-grips this time were hanging from my stomach and both gluteal folds.
So I gave up. Walked around the block. Came home. Took four anti-inflammatories. And now am hoping I can finish typing and still stand up to make my way into the bedroom. Otherwise I’ll have to sleep in the chair.
Can’t wait for next week!!
Every day another story -
Sofie
