I finally found a workout partner! Last week, I was perusing the "Strictly Platonic" postings on Philadelphia's craigslist site and saw a message from a 24 year old female looking for a training partner at my gym. I responded with a little information about me, and she replied a day later. We agreed that we'd meet twice a week to lift together.

I met her in person for the first time last night at the gym. She was so nice! She's getting married next fall and is trying to get in shape for the wedding. She had been working out with a personal trainer, but it was getting too expensive. So we followed a weight training routine I'd been doing from a class I'd taken last summer. It was a lot of fun and the workout seemed a little less taxing with someone there to encourage me and chat. We're meeting again Friday evening after work.

Today I'm pleasantly sore, but not terribly so. I arrived about a half-hour early at the gym and hopped on the treadmill until she got there. Then we concentrated on upper body and abs. We did cable bicep curls and tricep pushdowns, lat rows, lat pulldowns, shoulder press, chest press, twenty-ones with the EZ Curl Bar, and dips on the Gravitron machine. My arms and shoulders feel a little weak this morning from all the lifting, but I love it! That's how I know it was a good workout.

The ab workout was tough and included oblique crunches, an exercise called Six Inches which is totally hellish, and another "fun" one called Dead Bug, which involves lying on the mat and passing a huge inflated Swiss ball back and forth from between your feet to your hands and then extending your arms over your head. I haven't done that much ab work in a long time. It was designed by one of the trainers and occasionally, I feel like puking after doing it. Ugh.

She also showed me one of the ab moves she learned from her trainer. It looks deceptively easy, but it was surprisingly tough! I laid on the mat on my back and she stood behind my head. She told me to reach above my head and grab her ankles, then lift my legs together straight up toward her. Then she grabbed my feet and pushed them back -- FORCEFULLY -- toward the ground. My job was to resist her push and bring my legs back up again to her as quickly as possible. After five or six reps, I begged for mercy.

Looking forward to Friday night, when we do lower body and more abs, woohoo!

Does anyone care to share their weight training routine here? I'm always looking to try new movements.

Labels: health, technology