I’m getting all of my posts in that I’ve not done all week.

I learned this week that my gym offers all members a “Getting Started” hour with a personal trainer for free. I’ve been a member for nearly 4 years and never took my free hour. So I did this past week, with Dan. I wasn’t really getting started, but Dan offered a few new exercises to do as it was obvious I was pretty burned out from my standard push-up/bench press/squats/lat pull downs.

1) Push-Ups with the Medicine Ball. A standard push up, but in one hand you are supporting yourself on a small medicine ball (small enough to mostly fit in your hand). Do one set with the left hand, then one set with the right hand. Another alternative is doing push ups on the Bosu ball, which I used to do quite a bit, and I believe is why regular push ups are pretty easy for me now.

2) Yeats Rows. I’ve been trained well by Kate, and this is becoming a staple of my lifting diet. Dan also suggested these were good to do if my goal was to be able to do pull ups. Advanced move. Support your feet on a medicine ball. It was still doable for me, but definitely more challenging.

3) Split Squat. On a Smith Bar. This was the first exercise he showed me where I really thought I would feel it the next day. Again, it’s just a variation on the standard squat that allows for slightly different muscles to be used.

4) Squat with ball, combined with a shoulder press. This was a good combo move. Perform a squat using a ball against a wall. While you squat down you are also pressing a weight above your head, thus the shoulder press. Good time-saving move.

All in all, it was good that this was free. I learned some, but $60 would have been a lot to spend to find out that the exercises that Kate has been preaching in rowing is more or less what the trainers are preaching in the gym. I plan to go back, though. I have a $35 coupon. I’d like to get some mathy stuff done, figure out my true maximum heart rate and such.

By the way, the pull-ups I thought I was doing aren’t pull-ups. They are chin-ups.
Pull-ups = overhand. Chin-ups = underhand. I thought underhand meant cheating. See? Trainers teach you new things all the time.