Stick it out

I meant to post at the weekend, but I’ve been pretty busy, because THE D. B. MOVED UP HERE YESTERDAY!

I’m a little bit happy.

No, that’s not really an excuse for not posting on Friday or Saturday, but since he’s moved into my parents’ house, we had to move all my brother’s stuff out of the room he’ll be sleeping in. Which took a while. Also, I had to blitz my own room as it was, to put it mildly, total chaos, and if the D. B. had seen it that way, I wouldn’t have entirely blamed him if he’d had second thoughts about the whole marriage thing.

However. We got it all done, and he arrived at lunchtime on Sunday, and spent the rest of the day cooing at each other in a revoltingly soppy manner, and trying to get his new laptop to connect to our wireless network. And it’s been the first day of his new job today.

What with all of this, I have not been to the gym since Thursday. This is the first skipped session in quite a while, and it does worry me slightly. I’ve never had the D. B. around full-time while I’ve been doing this. Will I keep it up? Or will I want to dash home to his arms rather than going for my session? He has made the odd noise about joining my gym, but I don’t know how serious that was; he’s not keen on spending large sums of money on himself. (Yes, I know this is meant to be a virtue.) It’s up to him, but I really hope he does join, because otherwise – there’s no denying it – I will feel guilty for going.

But Thursday. On Thursday I had a dental check-up, and my free-weights induction.

Of the two, the dentist’s was vastly more scary in the event. (Only because I’m a wimp – my teeth are fine.) The free-weights, which I’ve been dreading and putting off for months, was fun. There were supposed to be three of us, but I was the only one that turned up, so I got one-on-one attention. The instructor was the same guy who gave me my Nautilus induction, way back when I was scared of those machines too (I should just rename this blog I’m A Total Coward and be done with it, shouldn’t I?) My gym has the most helpful instructors. They are all really nice, and this guy is no exception. He actually remembered me from eight months ago.

We started out on the Olympic platforms, and the instructor told me how to do a deadlift.

Now, I have been trying to make my mind up to try free weights for a long time. Months. And my primary source of motivation has always been Krista’s extremely full, thorough and funny site (go and explore – there's TONS more than I've linked to). So I’d looked at the “Dork to Diva” pages many times, trying to educate myself a bit.

And it’s all paid off. “That’s a perfect deadlift” said the instructor as I sank down the first time, concentrating on not rounding my back, and on keeping my heels still and shoulders over toes. (Of course I told him I’d been reading up – and where). Unfortunately, I did have a slight case of beginner’s luck – as my muscles got tired, proper balance became more difficult, and I don’t think I ever managed quite as well again!

I was expecting the squat to be more difficult, also – and it was. But I have practised it unweighted, and so it didn’t feel nearly as weird as if the movement had been completely new to me. Apparently both of these exercises are “all about sticking your bum out”, and I have a natural talent there. Anyone who saw me in ballet class as a small child would have no doubt of that…

But I think I can master both of these, and that the dumbbell exercises I want to do won’t be an impossible challenge either. I will still be using at least some of the machines, because apart from anything else, I’m just using practise weights for the deadlift and the unweighted bar for the squat and chest press, until I feel the form is right. That will still be a bit of a workout for a while, judging by the way my muscles felt on Friday… but it was a good sort of hurt.

And on a closing note, go and read this post. So much of what YP says is what I thought and felt for years, but could never express nearly so well...