The Gym And Why I Hate It

As some of you know I joined a gym back in January, you may not have known that I joined it in January, but now you do. The first month of my gym membership I went once. Yep a whole one time. It was hard to make time after work and everything, as I wasn’t sleeping much at night and when I got off work all I wanted to do was sleep. So that’s what I did. My mum, who is awesome, was really supportive of me joining the gym and I thought that was pretty cool. She sent me all sorts of cool little motivators. I went a few more times in February, not as many as to constitute how much I was paying for it though. Bryant’s mum joined our gym goings though, and we’ve been going quite a few times a week now (or at least trying too, it isn’t always constant). 

Yesterday… Yesterday the gym kicked my ass. I’m not kidding. It hurts to move today. The reason for the ass kicking is because I am quite lazy when it comes to working out. I would run sometimes on the tredmill (usually 30 minutes or so) or do a tad on the eliptical (also an ass kicker) but that was the majority of my working out. Until yesterday. I started weight training yesterday. I didn’t start with the 5 pound weights either. I started with 20. I can lift somethings, I don’t have a problem lifting bags of potatoes or anything like that, so starting out with 20 (well, 20 on each side of the bar) was pretty good. I did 3 reps of 12 and the first sign of how much I neglected my poor arm muscles… My left arm decided it didn’t want to participate anymore. It just decided that it wasn’t going to bend or be lifted. So of course the right arm decides the same thing shortly after. I move my arms as best I can in a way that can only be described as ‘octopus on drugs’. I sat down at the next weight machine and continued with my pattern of 3 sets of 12. My arms dropped on my last set at 10. I took a short break. I glanced in one of the horrid mirrors that gyms keep around so people can watch themselves fail. I could see the muscle in my arm cramp. I was liking watching a car accident. You see it happening and there is nothing that you can do to prevent it. I saw a bulge start to form under my skin, I knew what was going to happen right before my arm felt like it was on fire and being stung by a horde of angry dragon bees. For those of you who don’t know, dragon bees are a hybrid of a dragon and a bee. It spits fire and stings you at the same time causing HUGE amounts of pain. It’s even worse when it came from my imagination and I know that I’m just going to mutate the creature of pain further. But back to to story, my arms are on fire. Bryant helped my rub out the cramp in my arm, and the dragon bees disappeared. I knew they would be back, in greater numbers and more mutations. I sat down on the next machine, this one required that I reach up and pull down to work my back muscles. Easy enough, I thought as I sat down and began. It was entirely too easy, I assumed there had to be a catch. The catch, was bringing your arms back down to a resting position when you were done. Apparently while up in the air my arms had decided that they were not done rebelling and that they would rather stay in the up-right position and play freeze tag, with much less tag and more freezing. It was a slow bring down but the were eventually safe and back at my sides. A few muscle cramps later and I was done with lifting. With my arms anyway. Next was the legs.

Now my legs are in relatively good shape, they carry most of me around during the day and help e do menial tasks such as lifting. The legs were easy, I was thinking that the rest would be a breeze. I did calf extenders, knee lifts, and inner and outer hip adductions. It was awesome. Until I woke up this morning!

So, I didn’t sleep last night. CT kept my up with the utter nagging that I had spent the hours before lifting things that it didn’t think I needed to be lifting. Some Aleve and a rotation of the wrist braces proved to get it to shut up at about 6 am. I go to sleep.

Waking up was the hard part. I couldn’t move my fingers. I was able to lift my forearm and touch Bryant. He asked if I was ready to get up. His voice was pretty distant. I tried to move my legs and it hurt, moving my arms hurt, and once I was able to get the fingers going, they hurt too. I grumbled into my pillow, feeling like I had been hit by a truck and put back to bed again. 

So I was up and moving around eventually, I can’t sit in the same position too long, and I’ve discovered muscles that I  wasn’t fully aware that I had. 

I don’t really hate the gym. It is a place where I can go and work the muscles that have been neglected for a very long time. I just wish I didn’t hurt. But I’m off to the gym here pretty soon so that should be an interesting event.