Saturday Shatterday

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

Jack's back! Oh...and so are the 'Haters' ;-)

Gym Ninja  CANNOT contain her crush on new Fitness Hero Jack Lalanne. Remember from the other day? Well, Gym Ninja has watched even MORE of his motivational talks and wants to share.

Firstly we have a '10 point plan' that Jack came up with for us.  Here he covers exercise, nutrition, positive thinking, good habits, grooming, smile, posture, help others, relaxation and faith. Not bad eh?

Secondly, he does a rather amusing pitch about what he calls the 'Hog Family', and I'm sure we've all known a few of those eh? Where they take better care of their animals than they do themselves, as if in some way they think they are indestructible? Why do people who over fuss their pets and feed them the best food they can, then forget to do the same with themselves? Do you ever find yourself spending more time in the pet food aisle of the supermarket trying to choose your cat or dogs food then just grab stuff off the shelves for yourself in a millisecond? Why don't you want to take better care of yourself? Prevent illnesses before they happen simply by making sensible health choices? It doesn't take much-you just need to shop in the 'moment' rather than on auto-pilot.

Maybe there are some of you reading this blog who think that Jack was out of order to call the family the 'Hog Family'? How 'nasty and cruel' of him to pick on these people and call them such a name...is that what you are thinking, having read that and watched the video clip?? Gym Ninja knows that most of you agree with what Jack is saying, and yet she also knows for a fact that there ARE a select few of you reading this blog who are haters. Haters who love nothing more than to jump all over the words written here, no matter what source they are from, and pick them apart, take offence, growl and curse and ooze anger. Haters who like to take offense at pretty much everything that comes out of the Ninja blog  Gym Ninja gets to see the IP addresses & map locations of every single one her readers so can identify these ladies with ease. But what Gym Ninja would like to say to those girls (that is, if they can focus for long enough through their cloud of indignant rage that she's mentioning them again), is that they should really focus their attentions on something else. Something more important to them?  Just an idea, as pent up anger causes illness and damage to the immune system over the long term. Is this really the thing that is causing you such annoyance in your life right now? Truly? Hell, don't get GN wrong...if these ladies wish to carry on reading her blog then they are more than welcome to do so, and she is very flattered that they read it. After all, it pushes Gym Ninja up the rankings and gets her lots of 'hits' on the blog. But when they start to feel the need to add 'comments' on status updates and so on.....*sigh*....really?
Are you really doing that?
Why? Gym Ninja knows you know. She doesn't need 'clues'. Anyhow, she decided to mention it today after the 'comment' so that they get what they need-they get a 'mention' in the blog; they get a reason to get angry or annoyed or to slag her off, or whatever it is that they are hanging onto.. Do whatever makes you feel better. Just work through it and move on to something more worthwhile with your time.  That is your final mention in the blog. If you follow it still in the future then you are very welcome to do so,and you can simply relax and enjoy the content along with everyone else.  Gym Ninja may even give you a smile next time she sees you eh?

 ;-)

Anyhow, back to Jack! He is the guy who knows what he is talking about. He truly knows what it is to have the charisma and charm needed to help steer people in the right direction that GN can only dream of being able to do.  So, my final Jack fix is not an advice thing. No. He decides to demo his now famous 'Fingertips pushups'. This guy does press ups using the tips of his fingers, and even at one point with JUST ONE HAND! Gym Ninja LOVES how Jack suggests you don't try this at home....was anyone about to?

WAIT! Gym Ninja lied! She has one more Jack pearl of wisdom to share with you all today. For those of you struggling to get motivated to exercise. To those preferring to stay at home as it's a bit cold/dark or you're a bit tired/busy rather than go out and exercise.... For those who say they do not have the time to spare.....Jack says you are a 'Slave' to your body.... and you know what? He's right!

*sigh*

OK little Ninjarettes, that's your lot for today. Normal service to be resumed tomorrow (and she does apologise for the middle part of the blog that wasn't aimed at 99% of you, nor aimed at fitness, but to be fair she needed to say it.)

See you all (yes, even you!) tomorrow

Gym Ninja xx