Bonnie's Journey to Fitness

A Night of Reps

Did you ever wake up and just feel like you were in a cloud?  That was me yesterday.  I got to the office and just started drinking cup after cup of coffee, hoping that would give me the jolt I needed.   But all it did was give me an upset stomach!  I had a workout scheduled at TWR, and did not want to go.  But, I had made a promise to myself - I would not quit or make excuses.  So off I went.

I warned Ron the mood I was in.  He laughed and said he was feeling the same way.   I was paired with Elizabeth and Jennifer, and Ron (the big Kahuna) was our trainer for the evening.  Elizabeth and I have been working out together for quite awhile and we have great energy together.  Both of us have strengths and weaknesses and it’s great the way we can feed off each other.  This was Jennifer’s 2nd workout and she did great!  I think we may have found our newest member of the Silver Foxes!

This workout Ron had planned for us is one we like to call “The Night of Reps”.  There are a total of 12 moves, which you would break into groups of 3.  At the end of 3 moves you would do 16 walls - running hard 1 wall, light jog or walk 1 wall (so you are running 8 hard walls).

The 12 moves moves were:  Pull ups (30 reps), Pull downs (50 reps), Rows (50 reps), bicycle sit-ups (50 reps each leg-100 total), dips (50 reps), seated chest press (50 reps), sit-ups (50 reps), leg press (50 reps), smith squat (50 reps), forward pull downs (50 reps), low row (50 reps), and incline chest press (50 press).  Whew - I just got tired typing all of this!

This is a great workout!  It really pushes those muscles to the edge of failure - which is not a bad thing.  If you lose your form, or just can’t do any more reps -than you take 5 seconds, shake it out (maybe even curse a little at the trainer) and go for it again.   After the 2nd set of 3, I found that my knees were giving out during the run, so for the last two sets of 3, Ron had me switch to the jump rope.  Believe it or not, the jump rope is really a low-impact cardio move.  My knees handle it much better.  So while Elizabeth and Jennier were running their wall - I did 20 fast jumps, and then would stop while they walked/jogged it back.  Did this 8 times.

Although this may not have been a big cardio night, I was still able to burn 507 calories, and kept my heart rate in that optimal burning zone for 27 minutes.

It’s amazing how strong I’ve become with this type of workout.  A few of the gals at the gym have even called me freakishly strong.  At my age, it’s kind of cool to see muscle definition in my arms, shoulders and back start to appear.

I’ll post again after the weigh-in.  Keep your fingers crossed that I see another 1 to 2 lb loss (more would be so exciting - but I must be realistic).

And the journey continues.