I finished off the week with 6 workouts (including 4 lifting days) under my belt, so I am feeling good. Being off program always seems like fun for a week or two, but eventually I start to feel sluggish, squishy, unmotivated, and generally unperky. Getting in a full week of planned workouts fixes me right up, though!

Saturday at eleven I met with a trainer from LA Fitness for one of those free “introductory” workouts that are more or less sales pitches for their services wrapped up with a workout designed to lift your mood, get your endorphins circulating, and make you more amenable to suggestions like — “Doesn’t shelling out $720 for 3 months of training sound like a GREAT idea?” I knew this going in, plus I was still very much focused on completing our TMMO personal finance plan, so I decided to have fun with the questionnaire, get as tough a workout as possible out of the trainer(s), and ask a bunch of questions about their success rate, how their program would be any different from what I could do on my own, and what it was like to work for their company.

These PT questionnaires always assume a pretty low level of fitness and a newbie starting state for each client, so I found it amusing to put in some of my answers.

Personal Training New Client Questionnaire (Partial excerpt)

When was the last time you were in the shape you like the most? Fall 2007

How did you feel at that time? Hungry.

What keeps you from reaching your goals? I like to eat. A lot!

Do you have a special date or event coming up that you’d like to get fit for? The rest of my life.

Who will support you in your fitness goals and keep you accountable? My husband, my sister, the wonderful gals at my women’s fitness forum, and around 1,000 readers per day on my fitness blog.

I wound up with two trainers, the nice ectomorphic former Army 11B who went over my survey with me, and a compact, mesomorphic former powerlifter who actually did know proper form for the lifts we went through. I technically wasn’t supposed to lift again until Monday since I’d just done a heavy workout the day before, but what the heck. Opportunities to have one’s squat and bench press form checked and corrected by an expert are few and far between when you work out alone. The workout consisted of 3 sets of 8-10 reps of:

BB Squat
45 degree leg press
Leg extension
BB Bench press
DB lying press variations
Tricep dips
Tricep rope pushdowns

Apropos of nothing, my triceps feel like they have been repeatedly pounded by a meat tenderizer and stabbed with bamboo slivers and there is a burning ring of DOMS fire around the lower insertions of my quads and hamstrings from Saturday’s workout.

I am sticking with my solo MGS workouts for now, but it was a good workout and a productive way to while away the time while my car was in the shop for it’s 90,000 mile tune up.

My Ryka Versa cross training shoes arrived last week, and er…WOW. They are cute. And comfortable. And nice and flat, which means they are my new favorite shoes to wear to weight lifting workouts. They don’t work as well for running however, which is a blessing in disguise since I have a tendency to hop on a treadmill about 9 times out of 10 right after I lift to squeeze in some bonus intervals. I have better results when I put my running interval sessions on non-lifting days, so you might say that the new shoes are saving me from myself. I got them in both the black and white colors, but I have to say that the black ones are a lot more versatile with my wardrobe, not to mention very Asian fit chick chic with a pair of white liner socks.

Oh, and in case you missed my previous post about these Ryka kicks, you can read it here. Footlocker.com has another great no minimum purchase coupon code for 30% off available now, which puts the Rykas at $28.00 before shipping and sales tax. Not too shabby for a $60 shoe.

I’m finished gushing now. Back to the daily workout log.

I had another late night at work yesterday and consumed some subpar eats–pizza from Flipper’s, the home of the soggiest, greasiest pizza known to mankind. The fact that I actually kind of enjoyed the stuff just goes to show that I am jonesing for any kind of pizza at all. This tells me that it is time to put my healthy whole wheat chicken breast, turkey pepperoni, jalapeno, and pineapple pita pizza recipe back into my daily rotation. My workout for the day was a half hour Hip Hob Abs cardio session and some lunch time stretching at my desk. I wasn’t able to get to the gym in time for the 30 minutes of combined elliptical and stationary bike, but my calories were within spec, so I’m not going to worry about it.

I was limping around with some pretty major DOMS yesterday thanks to my back to back lifting workouts on Tuesday and Wednesday, but I managed to work out a lot of the stiffness this morning by tackling Workout A again with even heavier weights. Ferruggia’s plan calls for only 5 heavy reps, so combined with the fact that I am still trying to get my strength levels up to pre-July levels, I am increasing my weights by relatively big increments with each successive workout. I am generally finished with my workout in under 30 minutes, and I am seeing progress and clearly working hard based on the amount of whining I’m doing regarding my sore muscles. Best of all, I look forward to my time in the gym again.

There was a very surreal and silly moment this morning when I was performing my seated military barbell press with a 70 lb barbell and looked over to the next bench to see another woman doing the same exercise…but with tiny 5 lb dumbbells.

It’s great to be back in the gym, LOL.