Monday, July 19, 2010

Spiking the Punch

Wednesday 16th July - Lunchtime Punchfit

After the shock of finding out I was about to die, I had mixed feelings about the Friday “punchfit” class, and was being less than committal about the whole thing. I had agreed to do something, and had brought my gear in, but had not actually made specific plans with anyone to do anything in particular. But I had made the decision to do something “upper body”, to give my legs a rest, so in the end three of us went up at lunchtime for a punchfit class. A full session of boxing and suchlike.

It was during this class that I confirmed my suspicion that both trainer and music make a huge difference to my attitude towards the exercise. Instead of BZ featuring Joanna we had the kinds of things that people actually buy on CD. There was U2, John Cougar and other stuff which, if it came on my car radio would probably inspire me to change channels, but which in the context of this gym had me actually thankful.

Likewise, I am beginning to get the impression that there are different kinds of trainers and I may respond well to one kind, and poorly to another. One thing that separates them for me is that there are trainers who lie, and trainers who don’t. The spin trainer (let’s give her the entirely appropriate name of Jackie) was, basically, a liar. She was telling us how great it was, she was shouting “woooo” as if it was all fun, and when she said we had 10 minutes to go she meant 15. But the final straw for me was when we had ten seconds to go: “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, it’s stuck on 2!, 2, 1”. I have seen this kind of thing on Biggest Loser, and I honestly don’t understand how these people think it is in any way motivational. To me it destroys any trust, and causes an antipathy that can’t be repaired.

But punchfit guy (he did introduce himself, but his name has been lost in the haze of muscle fatigue. Let’s call him Punchfit Pete) was not like that at all. He was acknowledging that it was hard, seemed appreciative of the effort we were putting in and his 10 seconds lasted for about 10 seconds, maybe less. Which is not to say he didn’t push us. Hard.

The exercises were incredibly full on. Punching, running, jumping, sitting up and oh so many pushups. I calculated afterward that he had asked us to do approximately 150. I was doing them on my knees at the start, and against a wall by the end of it, and I still didn’t get in as many as I was supposed to. It killed me. I was absolutely destroyed. I had difficulty taking my shirt of to have a shower afterwards as it involved putting my hand above my head and lifting it. While talking on the phone to someone that afternoon, my arm started shaking with the effort of lifting the receiver. I managed to drive home, but my hands had to be in specific places on the steering wheel. As it turned out, I would be sore all weekend.

1 comment:

  1. ABsolutely agree with you. Just like schools - the teacher makes the biggest difference to student's attitude.

    And... music makes a huge difference. I have my headphones glued to my ears, and have written a playlist that will get me up that steep hill (treadmill) carrying handweights.

    Good on you Rob.

    ReplyDelete