Battle Wounds

The whole personal training thing is going great. (As long as there is no pumpkin pie or apple crisp around, I am doing quite well.)

So far, I've dropped 6% body fat, lost 1-inch on my arms and thighs, and a whopping 5-inches on my waist. My diastolic blood pressure has gone down 8 points and I am feeling good.

My trainer Dennis and I get along really well, and I love that we can both laugh at one another's expenses. Only it is rather an unfair and unbalanced relationship, in that Dennis seems to get way more laughs on me than I do on him.

Last week, he had me on top of the Bosu Ball. A rubber ball cut in half with a platform. This ball has been my nemesis from day one, when he had me do these fall-back, knees-together, crunch-up, throw-your-arms-up and lift-yourself-back-up exercise which left me bruised, beaten and completely out of breath. It was such a disaster I laughed uncontrollably and he tried to hold back.

He revealed the damn Bosu Ball again last week, and had me do a squat exercise with a 30-pound dumbbell bar while balancing on top of it. Basically, it called for squatting with the bar down to my ankles and standing and lifting at the same time, until the bar was over my head. Do once, repeat 15 times. Kind of like this picture, only with a 30-pound bar instead of an 8-pound ball.

My nickname around the gym is "Grace" for very graceful reasons. When I called Manny up to tell him I had fallen at the gym and it hurt really bad (I believe my words were, "I fell and it hurts like a bitch") his immediate response was, "Again?!"

While I wanted to smack him a good one, he was right. This was my fourth ridiculous fall since I began a month and a half ago. On about rep 8, the bar came up over my head, and I felt my feet shaking. My body began leaning back a bit too far, and instead of bringing the bar down in front of me and jumping off, I froze. Body falling back.... Bar above my head.... I hit smack right on my big bottom and the bar (all 30 pounds of it) came crashing down on my shin.

Everyone in the gym turned to look. Dennis was awe-struck. His eyes read "What the hell just happened?" and to save myself from mortifying embarrassment among the gym rats, I laughed. Really, really loud. Sure, my ego, and my leg, were badly bruised, but I couldn't stop laughing. How ridiculous! was all I could think.

If I see Dennis come around the corner next week with that stupid ball, and he asks me to balance atop again, I think I am going to have to politely refrain. Losing weight, I can do. Morphing into Grace is a bit harder.