I MISS BUTCH

I miss Butch. I'm lost. Seriously. One day and I'm hooked. Never mind the fact that in this economy I'm afraid to spend even a dollar that I don't have to because I don't know where the next dime is coming from. Never mind that the cost of a personal trainer is like a car payment. Never mind that for the past 48 hours, I've found it hard to rise from or lower into a seated position. Never mind that the bastard threw my age in my face. Before Monday, I never knew what I was missing. But now……………well……………..there's no going back.

No, I'm not going to hire Butch as my personal trainer unless I win the lottery. But I would REALLY like to. And since I don't buy tickets, winning the lottery is not likely. Butch made it interesting. I'll just long for the day when money is no object. Butch pushed me. Butch ridiculed me. OK, maybe I don't miss that part so much. Butch knew what he was doing. And therein lies the problem.

This is a new gym for me. I may not have gotten great results at my old gym but I knew where everything was and how it worked. The torture exercise equipment at this gym is unfamiliar to me. Who knew there could be so many different ways to work a muscle?

I returned to the gym yesterday sans Butch at my side. It was pull day. That means biceps and …..uh……..chest, I think. I guess I should have taken notes. Armed with my ipod jamming away, I walked to the section where Butch had shown me the "pull" machines where. The only one I recognized had two men working there and they didn't move away during my entire workout. I was finally able to decipher the code to work a few of the machines. I set my weight at 30lbs. I have no idea if that is too much or too little but I used to do much more. But I'm starting over now and I didn't want to over-do. I worked my way through four machines and decided since Butch was nowhere to be seen that should be enough for one day. I walked upstairs to my old friend the elliptical. Now don't forget that Butch told me to do no more than 30 minutes cardio and that I should stay in the "fat-burning" zone which means my heart rate should be no higher than 120. At first, I thought this sounded great. I don't have to exercise as long as I was doing before and I don't have to work as hard. This proved to be more difficult that you might think.

I'm not sure but I think my heart rate was higher than 120 when I got on the machine. I had to climb two flights of stairs just to get there. I was never able to get my heart rate below 129. According to Butch, if you work too hard during cardio, you start to burn muscle instead of burning fat. I thought I was going to like working out with less intensity. Instead, I found it very challenging. I flipped through several songs on my ipod trying to find the right tempo. I finally settled on these:

• Michael pre-27 nose jobs and hanging baby off the balcony Jackson's The Way You Make Me Feel. (This is such a great song. You can't help but move. The tempo was a little too quick so I had to visualize myself doing slow, controlled plies. This practice worked to some extent.)
  
• John Cougar Mellancamp's Cherry Bomb. (I got to daydream about the good old days when a sport was a sport and holding hands meant something…………baby.)
  
• Sara Evans' Otis Redding. (If you've never heard this song, you're missing it. It stirs my soul and evokes emotion in me that make me long for a simpler time)
  
• Marty Stuart and Johnny Cash singing Doin My Time. (Not only was the tempo a little slower but doin' my time was a nice fit, don't you think? Prison, Gym……..Potato, Potatto)
  
• Crystal Lewis' God's Been Good to Me (The story of my Life)
  

Thirty minutes of cardio completed and I was out the door. I noticed today at work as the day wore on that it became harder and harder to lift my arms. Butch would be so proud.