Er........
'Shatterday' as in 'shattered' due to tiredness, and NOT a fake past-tense colloquial term for lack of bowel control! Perhaps Gym Ninja didn't think through today's blog title properly? She was just trying to make a change from her usual 'Saturday Slaughter Session' title that's all!
So...GN yet AGAIN went to bed late last night as half the evening was taken up by her meticulously putting together a spreadsheet to chart her body composition. GN loves charts/lists/records of stuff. It's the geek in her. She used her Tanita Innerscan BC545 Body Composition scales for the second time since she shelled out silly money for them a couple of months or so ago. She is now determined to use them on a weekly basis to monitor how well her nutrition & training are doing (or indeed how badly if the results show negatively?). The reason she hadn't done so recently is that, to her shame, she'd not even done her weekly weigh-in since a fortnight before Christmas!
Luckily, weight increase was about 3-4lbs but surprisingly her body fat was now 4% lower! Golly. Does this in fact mean that Gym Ninja's regime is working correctly? She does hope so! However she will weigh herself weekly at the same time for a month to determine the fluctuations that can happen with body composition, before celebrating her low body fat! Oh, and she won't bore you with individual arm/leg/torso measurements and %s and muscle mass, water %, visceral fat, bone density, Resting metabolic Rate and Metabolic age....(Gym Ninja will save that for another day!)
So today GN headed out to the gym for her Saturday Slaughter session. She'd not done one of these for 2 whole weeks so was looking forward to doing a Spin Class again. On route she listened to the Scott Mills Radio One Podcast and to her delight, discovered her 'Dear Scott' email had been read out on air on Thursday. HOW exciting! (Sorry-she didn't find the direct link to the iTunes podcast for you to click on, but go look anyway...see if you can guess which email was from Gym Ninja?)
She arrived late at the gym so only had time for a 5 minute warm up and a shot of 'Target' energy shot, (the blue one if you follow the link) before heading up to the Spin Studio. Already in there, apart from a few gym towels reserving bikes like Germans around a pool, was the Spin Instructor. He was new to Gym Ninja and as she passed him she asked if he planned on working them hard today? Well, Gym Ninja has to ask-after all, not all Spin Instructors are created equal!
Much to her surprise, the instructor was very forthcoming. He went into detail about how it would be a hill-based climb session with some sprints thrown in, and that as he is a mountain biker himself, he can use his experience to give us all a good workout. Gym Ninja and Spin Man chatted for some time as the others came into the class (Bread Head and Clippy to name but two regulars). Gym Ninja then asked the 'crucial' question....
GN: "So, this is an hours class. Will you be doing a whole hour or just 45 minutes, as some of the others cut the class down to 45 minutes and we don't realise until we are outside and it's only 10.45am!"
The Spin Man looked confused. Luckily this was because he didn't realise that there were others that cut the class down. He planned on working us for the whole hour.
"That's great! No point being here if you're not going to work for a whole hour is there?" Explained Gym Ninja, looking across at her fellow Spin-ees (for want of a better name) hoping for agreement and nodding.
Gym Ninja was met by a room full of sullen faces, glaring at her. WTF? Why would you go to an hours class hoping NOT to do an hour of exercise? What IS the point of going? It's not Double Maths, whereby you do hope the teacher will let you out early. This is for OUR benefit.
So they began...and the music and class structure was great. Perhaps it was due to the energy shot prior to the session or maybe because GN has not done it for 2 weeks, but she found it challenging yet not too tough. Next time she will add on additional resistance to ensure she virtually trickles out of the studio as a melted version of her former self. No point doing it unless you push yourself to the extreme.
A quick 20 minutes of the Stair Climber followed...GN is trying to catch up on her cardio quota and wanted to take a break from her cardio intervals to trick her body a bit. As she did the climb, she watched the latest muscle dissection lecture on her iPhone (yes, it was replaced with a new one-remind GN to tell you all about the humiliating visit to Apple yesterday!)
Then it was time for LEGS! Gym Ninja decided to pre-exhaust the quads by rattling out 3 sets of leg extensions. It was tough going, not helped by a guy the height of a prize-winning sunflower cutting through the gap and walking directly in front of her as she raised her legs to full extension, thus booting him in the thighs! Next up, was the Hammer Incline Leg Press. As she walked over to it, she noticed an old guy ransacking the storage part of the machine. He was stripping off all the 25kg plates and taking them over to the Hammer Strength ab crunch machine.
Oi Granddad! Stop that! Gym Ninja needs some bloody weight plates herself you know! But he didn't take a blind bit of notice and loaded on 4 x 25kg plates on the lower part and another 4 x 25kg plates on the upper part of the machine. She then watched as he hauled his arms and legs together in a dual crunch like movement, dragging the weights with him. His face turned red as his blood pressure must have rocketed. Hmm, the only thing getting a workout in there was his blood vessels and his arms!!!! Humph! Gym Ninja then had to forage around the gym area for weight plates until she had enough for 120kgs.
Once her sets and reps were complete she hobbled over to the womens section to do some Bulgarian Split Squats & Romanian Deadlifts. The, grabbing a stability ball (yeh, ironic eh seeing as how much GN harps on about hating them) she began some Stability Ball Planks. Effectively you get the plank position yet your upper body rests on the ball, and you grip onto it for grim life as you roll side to side like a buffoon. Yeh, you may LOOk stupid but it does the job! Just as she was finishing up her last set, a voice boomed hello at her through the noise of her iPod.
T'was Spin Man. He wanted to know what she though of today's class. Wow. The guy wanted feedback! How marvelous! GN then ended up in a big long conversation with Spin Man about various levels of professional fitness people's techniques, people who eat and drink nonsense, the perils of bad instructors and so on...yeh, GN even managed to harp on about her mega crush Jack Lalanne too!
Ooops-sorry. Did you notice the pause? Gym Ninja set up the Jack Lalanne link for you and then ended up reading through his 'feats and achievements' again. Goddamit, why can't Gym Ninja be Jack Lalanne's friend?
On that obsessive note, GN needs to head off and stalk Jack Lalanne...
Have a great weekend-be back here tomorrow or else!
Gym Ninja x
