YMCA Adventures Day #2 – Locks, Lockers and Learning
Day 2 – Friday, 9/7
Felt like first day, freshman year of high school – my first to-do when I walked into the Y was to lock up my stuff with my brand new lock. Of course the damn thing wouldn’t open. Following the instructions, checking the #, nothing. Thank goodness for Amy Walla, Y super-trainer and lock-opening guru. She got it open.
First day using an ActiveTrax generated workout. When you get your ActiveTrax workout, you can either print one from the kiosk in the gym, or you can use the webapp on your phone. I had planned on using the webapp, but forgot to get it setup – so I used a printout. No big thing. The printout lists out each machine you need to use – and the machines are numbered so you can’t mess up. It also tells you how many reps to do, and what weight to use. Remember that strength test? That’s what determines the weight you use. Speaking of reps – discovered that when an ActiveTrax workout specs BEST as the # of reps – you can stop at 20. BEST means however many you can do – up to 20.
One of the things ActiveTrax does well is target muscle groups. Each workout that is selected will have a series of exercise, in my case, working opposing muscles in specific areas of your body. Today I had chest and back. Speaking of chest and back, those were the muscles that hurt the most from Wednesday’s workout – so I wasn’t sure this would be a torture session. Surprisingly it wasn’t.
I warmed up on a treadmill for 10 minutes before starting. The treadmill is one of the most state of the art things in the gym, with a TV/iPod doc on the front panel. I caught up on Obama, Prince Harry and the state of the economy courtesy of Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie while I walked.
Once warmed up, Amy coached me through all of my machine exercise. Apparently I forget to breathe when I work out – Amy’s comment during each exercises was, “Breathe, Monika. Breathe in when you’re releasing, exhale when you’re pushing” or something like that – don’t quote me on that being correct. Remember, I can’t breathe.
Got through the machine portion of the workout – then back to the floor exercise area for more CRUNCHES! Hooray! Not. These weren’t terrible though. Even though I’m not sure my muscles were onboard with what we were doing, I attempted a reverse crunch, an oblique crunch and two others that I can’t recall. I made it through, and Amy even gave me crap about doubting my ability to finish all of the exercise. I did.
Workout over, it’s time to get ready for work. If there’s one area that I’m still not thrilled about, it’s the locker room. In the shower area – I wish there were more hanging hooks or benches to put your stuff on.
Maybe I’m spoiled from having gone to the “health club” style gym in our office building – but it’s pretty spartan at the Y. It’d be nice to have a high shelf or two more hanging hooks to put your things on while you’re getting ready. Also, in the shower – there are no shelves or hooks, so be prepared to do the bobble, grab and lunge to reach any of your products that you have to set on the shelf on the other side of the curtain. Maybe I’m missing a key element to simplifying locker room routine – I’m open to suggestions if someone has one.
Despite the hassle – managed to shower, shave my legs (that was fun…) and get out the door in time to get to work on time.
