101 in 1001 {II}: 088 meet with a personal trainer [completed 05.07.09]
i have a hu-uge fitness crush on the biggest loser's jillian, the gravelly, motorcycle-jacketed trainer who makes contestants cry and puke and carry her around the gym on their backs. i've e-mailed with her a few times for work and always stop just short of telling her she's so cool.* she's what i imagine my ideal trainer would be: a slightly sadistic older sister who quit the soccer team to join a girl gang. bring the pain, fitness lady!
yesterday's session brought pain, to be sure, but it was sneaky pain. my actual trainer, a very pretty runner named noelle, informed me that 21.3% was an okay body fat percentage,** but that to get down to the excellent range i would have to lose twelve pounds. cold, noelle! one hires a personal trainer to be told these things, though: i get that. she told me that my eating habits sounded fine, took me through an hour of plyometric exercises that clued us in to where that pesky 21.3% must be (i have the abdominal muscles of a newborn kitten), and folded me up like a wonton for a while (assisted stretching: so much better than crappy old massages! i feel a magazine article about this welling up in me). i didn't feel punished, but i was coming around to the idea of having a workout buddy who tells me what to do: why not?
because, alas, such a buddy costs $500 for six sessions. i told noelle that joe and i would talk it over this weekend, but i'm pretty obviously going to have to learn to turn into a wonton on my own. my consolation, i suppose, is that while my first-one's-free hour is long gone, the civil unrest in my lower back feels like it'll be around until at least next week.
*it's now been almost two years since i last said something accidentally creepy to a celebrity! progress, right?
**it shocked me, actually: i've always figured i was at least 80% candy.
wait, did you do the stretching stuff they do with the olympic athletes? i've read about it, but i can't remember what it's called!
ReplyDeletehey, maybe! hard to be sure; there was sort of no preamble. i was leaping around one minute and then all of a sudden i was scratching my ear with my foot. they keep it random, these trainers.
ReplyDelete12 lbs less than 21.3%, what?! all this time i thought that 25-30% body fat was acceptable! ...i'm gonna go buy jillian's "fitness ultimatum" wii game.
ReplyDeletewell, i think her premise was that if i was there for personal training, i probably wanted to make significant progress (as opposed to "because i got a free session from re-upping our memberships and wanted someone to explain the crazy machines to me"). and she wasn't totally wrong - i did say that additional weight loss was one of my goals. she qualified the goal later on by giving the spiel about how it "should be more about how clothes fit than about an actual number," but when she came back around to quantifying the progress i'd make if i worked with her, i think she felt she had to use pounds.
ReplyDeletei'd heard about that wii game - supposedly it's pretty fun! do you have the balance board to use with it?
He he. I actually bought Jillian's 30 Day Shred workout last week and I've been loving it. I am lazy, but even I can commit to a 20 minute kick ass workout that doesn't require me to leave my living room. She may be my salvation.
ReplyDeletei don't think the entire game needs a balance board, only some parts need it.
ReplyDeletei decided to wait on the wii game - a lot of the reviewers said they had problems getting the game to respond to the remotes...
the 30 day shred dvd sounds pretty fun though!