Working out Cali style

After much procrastination, I haul my butt off to the gym on Wednesday. Luckily my gym has branches in California with one not to far from my apartment. All I needed to do was come in and make an appointment for my training session. As I stepped in through the doors I thought perhaps I had entered a covered version of Oshodi market without the confusion.

An aside - By the way I am watching ABC’s Extreme Makeover Home Edition as I type up this post, and I am just tearing up. Without fail every Sunday this show makes me cry. Its good news for my tear ducts, although I do feel silly afterwards crying for 'no' reason. I think the solution will be to just stop watching the show but I am such a sucker for triumph of the human spirit stories and secretly wish I could be a crew member on one of the remodels ...

Na so so people full everywhere, every piece of equipment had somebody on it furiously working out; jogging, stepping, pulling, pushing, lifting. For sure I had never seen a gym this full before. I was a little intimidated. The guy I spoke with was friendly and he put me at ease. I made an appointment for my gym orientation for Friday. Of course I went shopping for gym clothes (yes I am vain, I know) and I was finally motivated to shave my under arm hair! Friday arrives and I meet with my trainer who has piercings everywhere I looked. I had done the orientation thing in Texas when I first joined the gym and thought I had seen it all. Half way through I began to realize that orientation in Texas and orientation in California – two different things. In Texas they are a bit laid back, my orientation consisted of a walk around the gym, doing a couple of leg exercises, weighing in and calculating my body fat percentage. On Friday I did all of that plus a long series of evaluations; the way I walk was evaluated, the way sit and stand. My body was measured from top to bottom; shoulders, arms, waist, hips, thighs, calves (turns out I am very symmetric), my upper body strength was measured (with my trainer commenting on my apparently well developed triceps argh!) as well as my lower body strength. Apparently I am also well balanced on my feet and that was a surprise for me to hear although I must admit that I had noticed that walking in high heels has been a lot easy for me to do since I started working out last year, although a friend says that can be attributed to that fact that the walkways here are all paved! Oh and we had a long talk about nutrition and how important it is as per my quest to loose weight. I must admit that I haven’t been eating well since I moved out here, but now that I have my own place and can cook I am finally eating well. Once again I was encouraged to eat 4 – 6 small meals a day to keep my metabolism up, not peaking and dipping. I felt a sense of seriousness about this trainer, a sense I just didn’t feel about my trainer in Texas. I am really not surprised though; this is California, the land of beautiful people. Once again I am given a workout journal into which had been written all my vital statistics and asked to get my resting heart rate. I am actually looking forward to my next session next Friday so much so, I remembered to take my heart rate first thing this morning.