New gym, new addiction

The mister and I joined the local big box gym. I like the classes they offer and he likes that it's ten minutes from his office so he can go work out over his lunch break.

Last week I attended the first of my two free introductory training sessions.

This was the session where they dug out the fat calipers and played pinch-an-inch (or three), made me walk on a treadmill so they could tell me my physical age as opposed to my real age, and forced me to do the sit and reach.

But this testing was pretty demoralizing. Not that the trainer doing the testing was demoralizing, he was actually pretty encouraging. But the paper he gave me at the end of the night basically translated into moo-cow.

I talked to my brother's girlfriend, who happens to be a trainer at the same company, just a different location, and she filled me in. This testing? Total selling tool. They use it to try to sell me other not-free testing, to get me to buy a heart-rate monitor, and to get me to buy lots and lots of personal training sessions. So take the information they gave me with a grain of salt.

Which is what I've done. Basically, all the testing showed me was shit I already knew. Overweight and inflexible. And, done worrying about it.

Also, I have something to say about heart rate monitors. What the hell? I have two fingers and a watch, I'm sure I can figure out my own heart rate. Furthermore, all the machines at the gym have monitors in the handlebars. AND, I have a built in heart rate monitor. When I can feel my pulse in my sinus cavities, it's time to slow down. Explain to me why I need to buy a $250 dollar watch/chest-band combo I'm only going to lose in my car.

Anyway, I'm spending a fair amount of time on the treadmill, the elliptical, or the bikes (because I cannot find the weight lifting equipment. This is a BIG gym.), and because I have the attention span of a gnat, I've been looking for fun stuff to do. At my old gym all the cardio equipment faced the TVs and the gym was small enough and not-busy enough that I could just crank the volume on the TV I liked best and trot away. At our new gym, not all the cardio equipment faces the TVs and I certainly am not allowed to hunt up the remote and crank the volume.

I have discovered how to entertain myself though. The TV series Bones. I'd never seen it until a few weeks ago when it came on after something else I was watching and I was too busy with cooking dinner to change the channel, so I watched it.

Good show.

So I downloaded the past three seasons on to my ipod and now when I'm huffing away at the gym I watch an episode. They're about 45 minutes long, they're commercial free, and they're just interesting enough to keep me distracted from the jogging/stair climbing I'm doing without requiring more attention than I can give. The only downfall is watching TV shows on my tiny two-inch wide ipod screen. Not much detail.

Tonight is the second of my freebie training sessions. I'm hoping my trainer will show me where the weight room is. I also hope the weight room is not occupied by a bunch of huge, sweaty guys that make me feel guilty for doing the sissy weights. Flashbacks to high school track. Bleh.