Tag: gym

After weeks of stress and late nights, I decided to treat myself to a quiet afternoon by the pool at the One George Street outlet last Saturday.

I’ve always loved One George Street; it was what made me sign up with Fitness First on the spot. The pool is gorgeous and overlooks the City Hall area, it’s really like a little slice of heaven in the city. The gym itself has a nice, high ceiling, and there is an abundance of natural light streaming in during the day. At night, you get to exercise to the bright lights of the town. It’s just beautiful.

Anyway, took some pictures with the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone. Loving the effects, loving the app!

So. Yesterday, Mr Thick and I spent THREE HOURS in the gym and on the saddle of a stationary bike.

Yes, you are right, WHO THE HECK SPENDS THREE HOURS IN THE GYM ON A SATURDAY? Apparently, err, we did. And we spent only three hours there. There were people who happily peddled for EIGHT HOURS. Nobody forced us to do this at gun-point, strangely enough, we put our names down most willingly.

Let’s go back a little. The gym (and a most excellent one, I might add, they don’t always try to kill their members) had organised a “hell ride” at one of the outlets – eight hours of spinning on those dratted bikes. It was broken down into different sectors so I volunteered husband and I for the three-hour long mountain stage, intending to stay for all of one hour.

In the end, we stayed for all three hours, although I did take little breaks. At 5pm, we buckled in and started spinning. It went well, my lungs died a few times and came back to life and then at 6pm I took a one-track break. I headed out 45-minutes later to adjust my shorts.

(Let me sidetrack now by saying that if ever you are cycling and feel something poking into your lady parts, go to the loo IMMEDIATELY to adjust your shorts. You do not want to be sitting on the string of your shorts, which has hard plastic covering the ends, because IT HURTS and is ABRASIVE and you DON’T WANT THAT FOR YOUR LADY PARTS. That’s all I shall say for that matter.)

By 730pm, my right ITB was starting to tighten and I decided to go out of the room for some stretching. Stretching turned to downing Coke, which evolved into sitting at the coffee table flipping through 8-Days. Erm, yeah. I decided that it was a tad embarrassing to end the session with a Coke in one hand and 8-Days on the other so I headed back in for one last track and cool down.

Did I die? Surprisingly, no. The amount of perspiration I had excreted was rather cathartic. And it helped that there was a bunch of crazy ladies – A’s favourite members – who cheered and sang and waved their towels in the air throughout the three-hour ride. They helped to lighten the mood and turned it into something celebratory and festive.

There were bits where I pushed myself (up the slopes) and those were I didn’t (these gams ain’t got no speed in them) so in the end, it worked out nicely.

More importantly, I felt stronger knowing that I could do a three-hour ride. I went in thinking I would crash early on but I came out a winner, at least in my own eyes.

I did it and I could do it and I would do it all over again.

It may come across as propaganda-ish but honestly, nothing gets me going like a good workout.

Some days, I may be spent and worn out after getting off from work but I almost immediately feel better after dragging my unwilling body to the gym.
Yoga gets me all calm and stretchy, like someone’s pulled out all the kinks from my body.
Pump makes me feel strong and empowered.
Swimming clears the cobwebs from my head, and I feel refreshed and new after a plunge into the cold water.
RPM gets me pushing boundaries of my physical endurance like I have never done before.

So what better way than to start the long weekend with a grueling session of pump?
75 minutes long – with a dash of cardio madness.
Followed by a comfortable swim of 10 laps. I even got husband to swim two more laps so yay to him.
Chilling by the pool with my favourite boy (not husband!) and whispering to each other conspiratorially about how unseemly it is that our partners are on the weightier side.

I was showering at the gym last evening when Mr Brightside by The Killers started playing over the radio.

It made me feel like running.
But I can’t. Not till the right leg is fixed, anyway.

This feeling of “I want to but I can’t” is really hard to bear. I never knew how much I liked running or appreciated how my legs functioned until I wasn’t able to run. Typical human behaviour, really, not appreciating what you have got until you’ve lost it.

Oh it’s not like I really love sports. On the contrary, I’ve been terrible at sports, as my hand-eye coordination is dreadful. I could swing my racquet and see the ball fly past me overhead. Or I could suffer from ball-hit-my-headinitis. Strangely enough, when it came to activities that I can do on my own like swimming and running, I turned out to be surprisingly adept. Without much training, I could clock a decent 65-70 minutes for my 10km runs.

Slowly but surely, I’m inching my way towards that goal. It’s been two weeks since I started going for physio and already I can feel the difference. The back no longer hurts when I walk for long and my knee is not collapsing inwards as much as it used to. My poor butt is whimpering in pain, though, because of the exercises that I do almost everyday in the hope of strengthening the muscles.

As I practised running in the pool last night (getting my legs accustomed to the motions of running without too much impact), I decided to set myself a goal: by the end of the year, I’m going to run in a 10km race and try my darnest to clock 60 minutes. I’ll hit the tarmac at least once a week and revel in the sweaty, stinky mess of it all.

“Well do ya/do ya do ya wanna,” sings Franz Ferdinand in my ears on my running playlist.

You bet!

Today, the boyfriend said to me while we were on the train: “I am amazed by your thighs.”

No, this is not some R-rated conversation. We had been talking about my weights selection for the BodyPump class. I was relating to him the story of how a Caucasian woman had stared at my load for the squat track with a disdainful look on her face. If speech bubbles could be seen, hers would say, “Let’s see you squat with those weights, girlfriend.”

Well, I trumped her with my combined weight of 17kg (8.5kg per side on the bar), as compared to her miserly 10kg. And in other tracks, my weights were either equal to, or more than hers. So beat that, sister. Yes, you who made sure to glance in my direction every time I changed the weights on my bar.

I know it’s evil to feel so competitive but I can’t help it! It’s in the family, I swear. I honestly think that for a skinny twig like me, I have come a long, long way and I am immensely proud of myself for being able to carry weights that women twice my size would think twice about. Plus, I have finally put on a teensy bit of weight and that makes me really happy.

Sexy thighs, anyone?

Squats: 17kg
Chest: 7kg
Back: 10kg
Triceps: 7kg
Lunges: 5kg
Biceps: 7kg
Shoulders: 4.5kg