The Schoolyear of Scott

One of the activities that I plan on doing during the Summer of Scott is going to the gym more.  Being that I figure I will need as many excuses as possible to leave my apartment during the Summer, so as not to go stir-crazy, last week I joined the Gym of Buckhead, which is a huge upgrade over my apartment complex’s gym that I currently use.  With my membership came a free Personal Training session, which I decided to take advantage of this afternoon.

Gym of Buckhead

Now I consider myself to be in decent shape.  I go to the gym at least 4 times a week.  I can run a mile in under 8 minutes.  Besides when I played football in High School, I am probably lifting more weight now than ever.  Granted, a lot of the results from going to the gym are negated by weekend beer drinking, but that is besides the point.  I figured that this Personal Training session would be a snap, especially since it was just an assessment session to see what my base levels were.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

When I arrived, Tony, my JACKED personal trainer, told me to do a 5 minute warm-up on the treadmill to work up a sweat and then we’re going to do some High Intensity Training.  I set the machine for an easy 5.0mph and started jogging, to which Tony came over and reduced the speed to 3.7mph, which I wouldn’t even consider a power walk.  I thought, “this is going to be easier than I originally thought”.  That is, until he set the incline to some high number and the sweat began to roll down my back.

Tony, my personal trainer

From the treadmill we went right to the sit-up mats.  We did jacknife sit-ups, toe touches, bicycles, medicine ball twisty things and crunches.  Sets of 30, one right after the other, with no more than 20 seconds of rest in between.  I was already sweating through my shirt.  From there we went to seated rows.  Again, two sets of 30, 20 seconds of rest in between.  More sweat.  Then the iso lever bench press.  Two sets of 30, 20 seconds of rest.  We are barely 15 minutes into the workout and I’m completly drenched.  High Intensity would be an understatement for this workout, but I keep going.  We move to Leg Presses.  For some obsurd reason, he decides I should do three sets of 30 on this instead of 2.  Somehow I struggled through it but just barely.

Next up is tricep extension but on the walk over, something happened.  My right ear started ringing.  I seriously thought I was going to pass out.  I had to tell Tony I needed a break.  He said no problem, go grab some water.  The only problem with that idea was that it involved me walking.  I literally stumbled to the fountain and Tony had to help me find a seat.  The only time I have ever been more embarrased at a gym was like the 2nd or 3rd day of freshman football when after practice we went to lift weights, and I struggled to bench the bar because my arms were so tired.

Tony was a very nice guy.  In fact, I told him how embarassed I was and I professed that I really do workout and that I assumed I was in better shape than this.  He told me not to worry about, people throw up doing this program all the time.  I’m not sure if he was just being nice or not, but for my sake, I am going to believe him.  After a 5 minute rest or so, he scrapped the tricep extension and went to the curls.  He gave me 10 pound dumbbells and asked me to curl them 12 times.  Now this I knew I would have no trouble with…that is until I stood up to actually do them and got light headed again and had to sit down once again.

I finally curled the weight and Tony said that he thought I had had enough.  I was humbled.  We talked for a bit and he offered me the special rate of 3 more of those sessions for $199.  I told him I would think about it.  Maybe I’m not ready for the Gym of Buckhead quite yet…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 7:03 pm and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.