Hittin' my stride

Okay, it may be a bit early to proclaim that I'm hitting my stride, but I can say that I feel great after finishing Shoulders and Arms and Ab Ripper X. Not okay, not good... GREAT! I honestly can't remember the last time I finished a workout thinking positive thoughts. Usually I'm just grateful that it's over and the only thing I have to look forward to is a shower.

Even though I've been involved in the fitness (or at least fitness related) industry for the past five years, I never quite understood how people used working out as a cathartic experience. I've definitely worked out while angry or upset in an effort to relieve the stress (hey, everyone else is doing it), but the end result was usually just me being physically exhausted but with no relief to my non-physical anguish. After today I finally get it. I came home in not the greatest mood - work wasn't great, I lost a bunch of CDs that are important, and other things were pissing me off. I wasn't really looking forward to the workout, but I sucked it up as always with the thought of, "If I don't workout Muddy is going to have my head." So with my brother as the impetus I popped in the DVD and off I went.

This is my third time doing this workout (remember my experimental week before we started), so for the first time I was able to just completely zone out and do the work. The most mental energy I had to expend was doing a little math with my weights - that's it. It's the scripted nature of these workouts that makes this possible, and unbeknownst to me this was the missing ingredient, at least for me, to have a cathartic workout.

Normally when I go to the gym I have to worry about weight settings, what exercise is next, what stations are available, etc. That's just way too much thought. Even if my workout was planned it would usually get screwed up by some ape that decided to put a Volkswagen on the leg press and not take off any of the weights or the crazy anorexic with 9000 weights in front of her taking up three benches. If I tried to workout during peak times the gym would actually wind up creating more stress because I wouldn't be able to do anything I wanted, and my 45 minute workout would turn into and hour and a half of walking from place to place not getting anything done. And don't even get me started on self-defense training. Every second of training for me is spent agonizing over every minute detail of my technique. It's about as different from my workout today mentally as you can get.

So (at least for today) I take my hat off to Tony for giving me a positive workout experience that I haven't had in a long time. Maybe by the end of this whole thing I'll take back my douche comment. It's highly unlikely, but it could happen. Now it's time for some grub - I'm frackin' hungry. Somewhere during my workout my body decided that it wanted to ingest a horse. Is that in the diet? add to del.icio.us saved by 0 users