Friday, June 3, 2011

I am a terrible sell-out

 

Yesterday I saw a personal trainer.  I feel as if this is a horrible betrayal for some reason.  I’ve been training on my own for the last nine years.  I lifted three times a week while working 60 hours per, loading planes in Alaska.  However, I’ve had a nagging hip injury that has sidelined my running for awhile, and I thought maybe if I found a good trainer I could bypass hip surgery at the age of 35. 

My trainer is Jim Ferris (www.gymferris.com) and a super nice guy.  I noticed him at my gym, training guys who were 4-5 inches taller than me, and in way better shape.  Turns out he’s actually a professional, rather than a Bally’s stamped certificate variety of trainer, and I was seeing professional NBA players, etc.  Although wary of personal training, I decided that if he was being trusted with multi-million dollar athletes, he probably knew a thing or two about injury prevention, and could probably teach me a lesson.

That lesson was humility.   We ran through several stability and core exercises that basically destroyed me, in a fantastic way.  I’m looking forward to incorporating this new facet of training.  Jim’s been pretty excellent about looking for what I want in my training routine, and also been pretty charitable about working within my severely handicapped grad student budget (which is the reason this is partly a cooking blog and not a restaurant review one)

I ended up working myself so hard I gave myself heat exhaustion, and had to lie down and drink a gallon and a half of water the rest of the evening.  It was totally worth it.

My hip feels fantastic by the way.  Apparently it was a hip flexor issue that needed a special stretch to resolve.  How much damage I’ve done over the years is unknown right now, but at least it isn’t contracting my femur into the joint anymore.  So it goes.