And It's Off To The Gym We Go!

   Back in May, after taking part as a guest in a couple of exercise classes with a co-worker, Doralyn decided to join the local Goodlife Fitness club.
   Since then, I'd been toying with the idea of joining, as well, and last week I finally took the plunge.

Hmmm,,,doesn't seem easy SO far!

   I've been running for a year now and have joined an online group of runners who also blog about their experiences. Many of them talk about the benefits of cross-training. Cross-training, for these purposes, refers to pretty well any other kind of physical training other than running itself. This might include such things as weightlifting, pilates, zumba, yoga, planking, spinning, and tai chi. Often, cross-training will include combinations of these activities.
   The human body is a very inter-related and co-dependent organism and having one part of it strengthened often will improve performance in another area. This, in turn, lead to overall performance enhancement.
   And overall performance enhancement is exactly what I'm after!
   Apart from that, what I wanted to work on was a little bit of upper body strength---when playing sports, my legs have always gotten me where I needed to go in timely fashion but when I got there I lacked the upper body strength to be able to accomplish what needed doing.

A lot of THIS goes on there...

   When I joined Goodlife, I also arranged for three sessions with a personal trainer. The two of us have been assessing where I'm at now, where I want to be in the future and what the time frame might look like for getting me there. He's familiarized me with the cardio and weight machines and talked about ways to switch up workouts. One of the things I've learned in the last week that I never would have guessed is that if you go into a gym and do exactly the same workout every single time then you will make almost no progress after a certain point. Your body simply accommodates and acclimatizes when it's no longer being challenged. Changing things up is fine by me, actually, I have no desire to head off to the gym on a regular basis and just do the same thing time after time!
   At this point, we are still trying to come up with a routine that gets us both to Goodlife on a regular basis and, hopefully, a lot of the time gets us there together. I do sense that we're pretty strongly committed, though, so I don't think this will be too much of an issue. In time, we'll be all trim and toned with lots of energy and healthy outlooks.
   But that'll probably be Week 3....