Killing me softly?

I recently decided that enough is enough and joined a gym to try and get rid of my "baby fat" that I've been carrying around about 13 years now. ugh!

So my friend and I have been frequenting the gym on a semi regular basis. I came up with what I thought was a pretty good routine of working out.

Normally I would do 45-60 min in the treadmill to get things going. I was doing random or hill, which would change the incline at random times...but then I just switched to doing the entire walk at a 4.5 incline and my speed ranges between 3.5 to 3.8 (I think that's mph but I don't know).

Then it was time to hit the machines for 30-45 min. I rarely keep track of how many reps I do...usually it is just as many as I can at my highest weight then I knock the weight back and do as many as I can, and then knock it down again. My philosophy is it is better to do as many reps as I can than to lift a ton of weight.

And finally if I'm up to it I finish off with 15-30 min on the elliptical trainer. I set it for one of the glute settings, but I don't think there's really any difference.

However, when I signed up for this gym they offered me two 30 min sessions with a trainer. And this week I finally got my work outs with her.

Let me tell ya folks...this lady is BRUTAL!!!

After she takes a look at me and learns that my back is crooked (I knew this!), my hips aren't even (caused by the crooked spine) AND that my left knee turns inward...also caused by the spine. sigh! She starts with the torture.

First she had me leaning against an exercise ball and doing squats with 10 lbs of weight. (I'm not sure if that's 5lbs or 10lbs in each hand) By about 7 reps of this my left leg is begging for mercy and I think she let me quit at only 10 reps instead of doing the full 12...my brain is foggy with pain.

Then she had me lifting only 7.5 lbs of weight as if I were on my back on a weight bench...only I was balancing on the exercise ball. It was really tough to lift the weight, not smash myself in the head and remember to keep my back straight while doing this.

Finally she had me on the floor with my legs straight up in the air and using just my abs trying to lift my legs straight up.

My thighs were KILLING ME!!! (honestly they still are!)

For my second session she seemed overly pleased that I was still in pain. (folks told me that she would be! Trainers are mean!)

She started off showing me how to stretch my muscles out with foam rollers. While this was very painful she assured me that eventually my muscles knots would release...I still haven't seen that happen yet. I'm looking to get a foam roller for home use to see if it ever happens.

then she had me work on my triceps and finally some squat lunge walking (oops I nearly forgot the part that hurt the worst! the touch squat thing!) I could only feel this in my thighs yesterday, but a friend warned me I would feel it in my glutes today...and she was right.

I'm a mess. I'm trying to get myself to a hot tub today. I sure hope that I can!