Seeing the 'Personal' in Personal Training

A new, if obvious, angle into personal training has emerged this week ‘between holidays’ and amidst travel to visit family. The Personal.

I have begun my Pull-up Virgin Workout journal, a large-ish calendar I had purchased for some bodywork musing and planning, and have made a couple entries about my workouts every other day. The workout is pretty straight-forward, actually, and only requires doing it. Like most things, however, it takes all kinds of permutations to get to actually doing it instead of just thinking about it. But after a long day of rambling, then napping, with little else ahead for the evening, I finally got to it. I cleared the downstairs of obstructing furniture—coffee table, ottoman, etc.—and took my time with the calisthenic-esque workout listed (at end of this post). If one uses parts of the floor covered by furniture, there's less chance of being on floor where dogs (etc.) have been!

Thing One. One of the reasons I do so little body-movement or work-out things at home is the never-ending barrage of self-critique that comes. It's volatile and vitriolic, for whatever reason. Where did I learn to dislike my own form so very much? I can distract myself at the gym—there are all kinds of people around—and I can even deaden some of the internal noise with my iPod—depending upon the mood, using either oral-teachings from SoundsTrue or tunes of some kind. But at home, with all my familiar comforts and distractions, I find it hard to stay at anything challenging, requiring bodily stamina. I find it hard not to listen, eventually believe what my inner-demons have learned to spout about myself. Which then made me realize just how very much my personal trainer, N, keeps me talking and listening while I move, while she makes sure I don’t hurt myself. J Amongst all kinds of other benefits, I think I’ve become as strong, dare I say as fit as I am because I’ve been mentally distracted by conversations I value while my body moves. Keep the mind busy and the body may just have a chance to say something in its own ‘tongue,’ so to speak.

I need to continue to deepen my ability to listen too, as I discovered the next day. The entire workout felt good, actually. I observed the voices as they whined, encouraging them to whimper into some peace and quiet of just moving. I allowed the shortness of breath to be what it was, resting when I needed to amidst the sets of 15, knowing it was more important to simply complete the movements with good form, not worrying about timing or pace, just yet.  And I felt the pleasure that always comes when an over-achiever reaches her numerical goals, even surpassing them to 16 reps, “because my birthday is day 16” my mind rationalized.

But then I get out of the driver’s seat at  the Minnesota History Museum the next day and ‘toink!’ went my back. Lower back, to be specific. I probably overdid it, again without knowing it. It relaxed over the course of the next hour and it all seems fine. Never debilitating into no-movement-flat-on-the-bed kind of space, but a small sign that I had apparently missed something my body had said. So…I need to continue to deepen the ability to listen. Why does that always seem so elusive to me!? How do you listen for the quiet speech when the ugly voices are so strident?

But the new thing, the new awareness that is making me smile, is simply how personal personal training needs to be. For me, at least. I have new appreciation for how social it is, how connective it can be for a woman such as myself. It’s a relational thing, actually, with body-benefits. And it’s a body-thing, with learnings internal and external. Now that I know that, a new task is to learn how to integrate the simple body-movements of some basic-fitness into my work-a-day world, companioning myself as well as being companioned by a trainer. A bit in the morning, on my own, can only increase my strength-training skills and my ability to body-listen, which should also help the eventual familiarity with the pull-up bar in the end.

So be it. Oh, and here’s the Pull-Up Virgin’s Work-out, for now:

Set One

15 Superman-flight, hands-fee push-ups

15 wide-pulls with bands, squat form for leg-strengthening

Set Two

15 1-2-3 Superman-flights, 1-2-3 hold hands-free push-ups

15 quick-row, 1-2-3 hold wide-pulls with band, squat form

Set Three (had to skip; no easily identifiable weights)

Russian twists with weights—floor, floor, up 1-2-3

Russian quick-twists with weights

Instead:

Leg-lifts with abduction movements

Downward Facing Dog without touching the floor—15x

Set Four:

15 second-step lunge-raises, off-angle for hip-flexor stretch

15 lunges with core-twist, 15/side

Set Five:

15 each-side, Side-arm planks, arm raise and floor-touch

15 each-side, hip-movement elbow-planks