Still growing up

I guess no matter who you are, everyone loses their composure at some point.  Today I kinda lost it with someone and it wasn’t pretty.  The issue at hand is irrelevant for this post – that’s between me and this person to still sort out completely.  But I’m not happy with myself about finally saying, “Whatever.  I’m done” and then walking away.  That is NOT a person I’m proud to be.  Yes, I knew I didn’t have anything further to say (that I wouldn’t regret), nor was I willing to listen anymore.  But what do you do when you get to that point?  Walking off isn’t the answer but what do you do??

Neither of us was fully right nor fully wrong in the things we said or felt.  We both had our own skews about the topic and what each other was saying.  I know I have some self-examining to do, some things to think/pray over.

We saw each other a little later and both apologized.  It was sincere and I’m very thankful for that.  We still need to finish the discussion but I think it will be handled more appropriately and with more care for each other.

I guess my point in writing this post is some sort of self-acknowledgement that I don’t always have it all together.  Maybe I like to think I’m more mature than I really am.  Pride still catches me by surprise.  I’m still growing up.

What's in your pocket?

The other day I picked up my son after work and started heading home.  I remembered that I had something unusual in my pocket.  I asked my son to guess what was in my pocket and told him he’d never get it.  He named a few ordinary things and then suggested that maybe there really wasn’t anything.  So I pulled it out but kept it concealed as much as possible.

He could see that there was something white and that I couldn’t close my hand around it.  I don’t remember if he tried a few more guesses or just waited.  So I put it in his hand before removing my hand so he could see what it was.  An egg.  Not something most people have in their coat pockets…

I wish I could have captured his expression and the way he looked at me.  I was cracking up and couldn’t stop to explain.  Finally he asked if it was a boiled egg and I said yes along with the explanation.  At breakfast I was going to have two boiled eggs but only ended up eating one.  I thought I’d eat the other later in the day as a snack but didn’t.  So I decided to bring it home and happened to have it in my coat pocket when I picked him up.

What a laugh we had!!

Postie's Jig

Tonight I had the absolute delight of introducing some friends to Scottish dancing!  My favorite Scottish dance is the Postie’s Jig so that’s what I taught them.

Technically we should have had 4 guys and 4 ladies but we only had 3 willing male participants.  So another woman had to take the place of a guy.  That usually works out easily when everyone is familiar with the dance.  But when you’re just learning the steps and turns, it can be confusing to remember who is a guy and who is a girl.  So it proved to be quite entertaining!

We walked through the dance a number of times before we added any music to it.  At first it was a bit challenging to instruct everyone on what they needed to do at the same time.  When you have 4 corners casting off at the same time, it’s hard for them to understand that they’re really just doing mirror images of each other since it looks to them like they’re all going in different directions.  And trying to explain the half figure 8s, bridges (arches), and corner turns all seems chaotic at first until they see the very logical pattern as it develops.

Once they started seeing it all come together (and saw a demo on youtube), the pace really picked up and I could tell they were enjoying themselves.  I didn’t want to start with the youtube demo because I was afraid it would look overwhelming to them before even giving it a chance.  Since I started with a walkthrough, it was much easier to point out what was happening when they actually saw the demo later.  After that we were able to add the music and actually dance!  Actually I still did the calling out and prompting but I loved seeing the enthusiasm.

This experience took me way back to the days of extended curfew and breathless dancing.  It really was quite the workout but so much fun!  Some of the guys were great at spinning us around too – to the point when we were almost airborne sometimes!  Such wonderful memories!  I really can’t wait to do this again if I can get 8 willing participants!

RPE

After my last post, a friend brought up RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) and made some great points.  My last post is incomplete without this topic.  How hard you think you’re working out can be quite different from how hard you’re really working out.

Sometimes it takes working out with a personal trainer to put forth the effort you’re supposed to.  When it’s one-on-one there’s nowhere to hide, haha.  Your trainer sees all and knows all.  There are people who might try to fake being at their limit (and might even get away with it), but I don’t see any point in doing that.  I’m paying for the session so I want to get everything I can out of it.  *I* have to do the work if *I* want the benefits.  Besides, I’m pretty sure my trainer could see right through me if I tried to fake it.  In fact there are times he’ll ask, “Is that all you’ve got?” and I realize I’ve got more to give.  Some might take the question as an easy out – a chance to say, “Yes, I’m done!”  But when I hear that question, it’s the challenge I need and want in order to dig deeper.  I rarely pushed myself like that on my own before going to a personal trainer.  Now it’s easier to push myself elsewhere (like the 1000-rep challenges or class/group workouts) because I’ve been learning that I’m capable of doing more.  This is exactly what I needed.

I think going to a personal trainer also helps to reduce (if not eliminate) excuses.  Turns out I was the queen of excuses when I was trying all my own fitness plans.  I didn’t like cardio, I didn’t want to get up early, my schedule was so busy, and so on.  To be honest, I think I was trying to figure out how to get by with the least amount of effort or disruption but was expecting incredible results.  Seriously??

You don’t get excuses with a trainer.  But really, you don’t want to make excuses either!  Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think most people who pay for a trainer are trying to just “get by”.  Maybe this is one of the keys to my success.  I want it and I’m willing to earn it now, whereas in the past maybe I was playing games with myself.

So maybe part of the value of becoming a personal trainer is helping someone reach beyond what they thought they could do.  To give accountability and encouragement as much as fitness guidance and knowledge….

Wow, there’s a lot more to personal training than just physical fitness!  I’m so excited!!

Getting certified

Lately I’ve been thinking about getting certified as a personal trainer.  Actually it isn’t a new thought, but I’ve never taken it seriously until now.  Fitness has fascinated me for years but I struggled to get my own results.  And I expected a certain physique and fitness level from myself before I felt I could justify such a pursuit.  I mean, you wouldn’t go to a dentist with terrible teeth, would you?

I loved talking with friends about fitness and training.  I poured through fitness magazines (you should see the stack that I’m still loathe to discard), read articles online, tried different gyms & DVDs, and created my own regimens.

I worked out but just wasn’t getting the results I wanted.  I loved working with weights but disliked cardio.  I tended to feel guilty if I did strength training without first tackling the dreaded cardio.  I became unmotivated because I thought I needed more and more cardio.  I wouldn’t allow myself the reward of working with weights if I hadn’t put in sufficient time and effort with cardio.

And the extra cardio didn’t help!  I remember doing P90X and feeling so frustrated with my lack of results that I actually took half days of vacation time to add extra cardio (elliptical or treadmill) to the daily workouts.

And food wasn’t the problem.  Or so I thought.  I kept spreadsheets of my nutrition plans and what I actually ate.  I tracked calories, fat, and as many nutrients as possible.  I calculated the ratio of carbs, fat, and protein.  I worked hard to get the right number of servings of each food group while staying within the calorie/fat limitations I set for myself.  And I can be pretty disciplined with food when I want to be so I rarely had avoidable deviations.  I even did marathon cooking sessions, where I cooked about a month’s worth of meals and portion-froze everything.  I had variety and convenience; it was easy to choose my healthy home-made meals over fast-food.

But the lack of results and my increasing dread of more cardio took its toll and I found myself slipping into poor choices.  Why should I eat healthy if it wasn’t helping?  Why should I keep up the cardio if it wasn’t doing anything?  (You’d think I’d at least keep up the weights since I enjoyed that but I didn’t think I had earned that privilege without doing cardio first.)  So I started splurging.  Then I justified splurges more frequently until they became the norm rather than the exception.

At some point I’d get frustrated with how I looked and felt so I’d look for another fitness approach.  I still believed that long cardio was the key to success.  I would end up going through the same cycle, lose motivation again, start eating crazy stuff again, and then I’d be worse off than I was before.

When I finally made the choice to go to a personal trainer, it was a bit out of desperation.  Why didn’t my body respond to everything I had already tried??  Part of me believed that maybe something was wrong with me and that going to a trainer would prove that.  (Kinda like I was daring someone to try to get me fit because it couldn’t be done.)  On the other hand, I knew it could be done but just didn’t understand what I had been doing wrong.  So I had to swallow some pride and remind myself to trust my trainer to be the expert, not me.

Wow, what a difference that has made!!  Personal training has been transforming me in so many ways.  Certainly my body, but also my understanding of exercise and nutrition (and smarter cardio, not longer or none).  It has fueled my desire to learn more!  Definitely for my own knowledge but hopefully to also help others who feel stuck in a rut (or those who are new to fitness).

I’m not done with working with a trainer.  Far from it!  I’ve had a taste of what it feels like to start getting fit and I want plenty more!  But I think that studying and getting certified as a personal trainer will help the sessions with my trainer become even more productive.  Every time he tells me to focus on a certain muscle group or to pay attention to my form or keeping the motion controlled, it makes a huge difference.  There is still so much more I want to accomplish with his help.

And I definitely want to understand the nutrition component of fitness better.  There are fad diets, trendy food advice, new products and supplements, etc all the time.  I definitely don’t believe everything I hear but I don’t always know how to process or respond to some of it.  There are many different views on nutrition.  And my background with statistics and data analysis has helped me understand that you can’t always take conclusions at face value, even when supporting data is cited.  It might be skewed to support a certain position.  Not that the data was falsified, but that it might be misrepresented, or maybe conclusions were made without sufficient data.  OK, I’m getting off track.  My point is that I want to learn a lot more so I can better discern things for myself.  I’ve already learned a lot from my trainer and I trust what he tells me to do.  But if I’m going to open my mouth and advise anyone else, I want to know what I’m talking about!

Wow, all this to say that pursuing a personal trainer certification is very much about arming myself with more knowledge.  It isn’t about changing careers (at least not yet, haha) or making money.  I may or may not ever have clients of my own.  But now that I’ve been released from my own fitness rut, I am eager to learn and experience so much more!!  I do hope to be able to help others achieve their goals too.

First things first.  CPR & AED certification on Monday!!

Panthers and masters degrees in boxing

I like that I usually remember my dreams because they can be quite entertaining.  At least to me.  Last night’s dream had two parts.

In one part of the dream, I was taking a walk in my neighborhood.  I turned this one corner where I tend to be afraid of a dog that lived there.  (In real life I’m not sure there really is a dog there.)  As it turned out, I didn’t need to be concerned about the dog.  Not because it wasn’t there.  Oh it was there alright.  But because apparently the owners had a pet panther.  Adult size.  Unrestrained.  Why????  I don’t know but I wasn’t about to stop in and ask.  I had much bigger things to be concerned about than the dog.  (Now to be fair, the panther seemed to be quite friendly with the dog.  But for how long??)  All I wanted to do was get home before the panther spotted me.  I had to keep telling myself, “Act calm.  Walk, don’t run.  Don’t do anything to get the panther’s attention!”

In another part of the dream, I was hanging out with some friends and trainers from the gym.  Several of us were quizzing the pro boxer in preparation for a masters degree in boxing.  From a textbook!!  It was hilarious!  We kept asking him, “And why do you want to do this??”  His response was that he wanted a degree.  Never mind that he has already been demonstrating his talent and knowledge!  Nope, he wanted a masters degree in boxing.  Meanwhile his trainer hung out on the sidelines observing all of us and kinda shaking his head like, “Seriously?  This is ridiculous…”

What will I dream about tonight???

Family focus

Spending time with family tends to present great fodder for blog posts.  Some things pretty much stay in the family – partly because others wouldn’t have the appropriate context and partly to just protect the innocent.  :-)

One thing I love about my family is that we’re all generally easy-going and willing to accommodate others.  And it’s a good thing since we had “family sleepover” the first two nights I visited.  That meant there were 8 of us sleeping within feet of each other, and 2 others on another level of the house.  It actually worked out great and none of the early-risers disturbed the others.  (Now that I’m accustomed to getting up earlier, I considered continuing the trend but didn’t want to take the chance of some little heads popping up from their pillows in hopes of play time.  So I stayed put until I heard others moving around.)

I also love my family’s passion for music.  My younger brother’s girlfriend introduced us to Christmas crackers which contained whistles.  The whistles each played a different note and were numbered.  So my younger brother played conductor and prompted each of us with his baton (by #) to play a few tunes.  It was quite entertaining.

Besides the whistles, we also spent some time in acapella singing after opening Christmas gifts together.  We even had 3- or 4-part harmonies for some songs.  Truly beautiful.  It reminded me of how we used to pass hours of travel time in Cameroon and Nigeria by singing together.  I suppose many families don’t sing together like we did (and still do) but it works for us.  :-)

We’re also a family that enjoys playing games together.  Not xbox and video games, but good ole board games and card games.  We have some tried and true games but we enjoy discovering new ones too.  We tried out a new game called Dicecapades that was a lot of fun!  A great mix of activities for both left and right brained people!  Stacking large dice on small dice on a table (or same-sized dice in the palm of your hand while standing on one foot), some trivia (which I’m terrible at but might actually remember if it’s obscure knowledge, such as arachibutyrophobia being the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth), some physical challenges (I had to arm wrestle one of my brothers, another member had to roll the dice to see how many push-ups she needed to do in 30 seconds), and so much more!  (Can you tell I liked this game??)  What I love more than the games we play is the opportunity for us to connect casually and laugh a LOT together.

I have a pretty awesome family.  We’re our own kind of “normal” and we like it like that.  :-)

10,000 reps

There are some challenges that I just love.  And my gym happens to have a good one going.  10-day 10,000-rep challenge.

Some of the fitness classes are doing the 1000-rep daily challenges and it’s a lot of fun.  (Some people might choose a different word.)  Everyone goes at their own pace and ability, which is perfect for those who really aren’t there for the challenge.  And it’s also great for those on a mission!

Since I meet with my trainer twice a week, I don’t go to the classes on those days.  So this morning I missed the challenge which happened to be focused on cardio today.  An interesting combination of jump-ropes, jump squats, burpees, high knee runners, and jump/step ups.  Actually I wasn’t entirely sorry that I missed it since I still don’t care for a lot of cardio.  Bursts of cardio, ok.  A whole class of cardio challenge, ummmm….

When I saw it on the board, though, I wondered if my trainer would make me do it as part of our training session.  But when he arrived and went to grab some dumbbells for my workout, I was relieved that my challenge would come in a different form.

BUT it turns out that I will have an opportunity to complete today’s challenge anyway.  A few of us will show up at the gym about 5am tomorrow to catch up on prior daily challenges before tackling the current one.  I think two of us will do today’s challenge and a few will do Monday’s challenge.  And then we will all have the joy of working on Wednesday’s challenge, whatever it may be.  For those who need help counting, that’s 2000 reps tomorrow.  If I make it.  :-)

Let’s find out!!

Content to be Calused

Calluses are my friends.  Not the kind on feet, but the ones that develop on your hands from heavy weights or pull-up bars.  Oh yes.

They make me smile.

A while back some people suggested that I get weight lifting gloves because my hands hurt while trying to grip the pull-up bar.  At first it sounded like a good idea until they told me that calluses would develop if I didn’t get gloves.  That’s all I needed to hear to decide NOT to get gloves.  I want my own calluses!!

And now I’m starting to get them.  They’re not very pronounced yet.  Probably no one would notice them unless they tried to hold my hands.  But ain’t nobody trying to hold my hands so this is working out great.  (And if someone did try, he’d better be fine with calluses on my hands because I intend to continue developing them.)  :-)

So don’t stop now, calluses!  Let’s see more evidence of some great workouts!  WOO HOOO!!