For years I've heard rumors about diet and exercise, diet and exercise, but I never paid much attention. People were flappin' their jaws on all the talk shows: use it or lose it, aerobic activity, optimum heart rate, blah blah blah. I usually changed the channel and opened another box of bonbons.
But now, as you know from my last blog post, I've gone and hired a personal trainer to help me exercise. What was I thinking? Just like in the movies, he says things like "give me ten push ups" and "just three more." To my surprise, the exercise actually feels good. I'm pushing up and pulling back and lifting with my legs and balancing on one foot, all new territory for this out of shape middle-aged body. Of course, I can't do actual push ups. My trainer has me push up from a bar set several feet off the ground, so my body's at a great angle from the floor. I push up about four inches, back down two inches, up an inch, down a half inch, etc. until he'd need a magnifying glass to see how much I've moved. And when I started the rowing exercise, my trainer had to take twenty pounds off the already wimpy sixty pounds resistance he'd set.
I seem to be in a baby steps class all my own. If this were skiing, I wouldn't even be on the bunny slope. I'd be on a large flat area, maybe a Kmart parking lot hours before the store opens, far from the bunny slope, with an instructor who wanted me to prove I could just stand there without causing a disaster before he let me anywhere near an incline and small children in cute ski outfits.
In my first session with the trainer, he asked me for an inventory of every injury and accident I've ever had. Hmmmm. No one's ever asked me that before. Accidents and injuries? I've had plenty. This body took a real beating in my twenties. (It's no coincidence the injuries occurred in my twenties, my wilder, more clueless years.) Oh boy did I have car accidents. There was the time I rolled a car, hitting my head each time the driver's side of the car impacted with the ground. There was the winter I fishtailed on the road, hitting the rear of a stopped car with the wildly spinning rear of my car. Then, in my no-longer-wild thirties, about eight months pregnant with my older daughter, I got broadsided by a Mack truck and was pushed down the street about twenty feet with nothing but the grille visible in the driver's side window. I had to climb out of the car over the stick shift. Eight months pregnant.
No wonder I'm not allowed on the bunny slope. Next post I'll tell you about the time I fell in a manhole. Oh, life was interesting back then. Dangerous but interesting. But dangerous.
But now, as you know from my last blog post, I've gone and hired a personal trainer to help me exercise. What was I thinking? Just like in the movies, he says things like "give me ten push ups" and "just three more." To my surprise, the exercise actually feels good. I'm pushing up and pulling back and lifting with my legs and balancing on one foot, all new territory for this out of shape middle-aged body. Of course, I can't do actual push ups. My trainer has me push up from a bar set several feet off the ground, so my body's at a great angle from the floor. I push up about four inches, back down two inches, up an inch, down a half inch, etc. until he'd need a magnifying glass to see how much I've moved. And when I started the rowing exercise, my trainer had to take twenty pounds off the already wimpy sixty pounds resistance he'd set.
I seem to be in a baby steps class all my own. If this were skiing, I wouldn't even be on the bunny slope. I'd be on a large flat area, maybe a Kmart parking lot hours before the store opens, far from the bunny slope, with an instructor who wanted me to prove I could just stand there without causing a disaster before he let me anywhere near an incline and small children in cute ski outfits.
In my first session with the trainer, he asked me for an inventory of every injury and accident I've ever had. Hmmmm. No one's ever asked me that before. Accidents and injuries? I've had plenty. This body took a real beating in my twenties. (It's no coincidence the injuries occurred in my twenties, my wilder, more clueless years.) Oh boy did I have car accidents. There was the time I rolled a car, hitting my head each time the driver's side of the car impacted with the ground. There was the winter I fishtailed on the road, hitting the rear of a stopped car with the wildly spinning rear of my car. Then, in my no-longer-wild thirties, about eight months pregnant with my older daughter, I got broadsided by a Mack truck and was pushed down the street about twenty feet with nothing but the grille visible in the driver's side window. I had to climb out of the car over the stick shift. Eight months pregnant.
No wonder I'm not allowed on the bunny slope. Next post I'll tell you about the time I fell in a manhole. Oh, life was interesting back then. Dangerous but interesting. But dangerous.
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