Categories of New Year Resolutions

We’re into the new year now and many resolutions will have been made – and possibly already broken – concerning food (eat less of it), alcohol (drink much less of it) and exercise (do more of it). I am fine with alcohol because I gave it up many years ago, but food is much more of a problem, especially here in NZ, because my daughter makes the most delicious cakes and biscuits which I find almost impossible to resist. Exercise is a different matter and something I have a love/hate relationship with. I love seeing other people doing it and I hate doing it myself. Nevertheless, a few weeks before Christmas, I decided to treat myself to six sessions with a personal trainer to get a little bit fitter and in shape for the festive season.

Six Sessions with a Personal Trainer

The first session established a very simple fact: that I was very unfit indeed. My heart rate rocketed after only a very short time stepping up and down on the step and took a long time to recover. I could do three sit ups and one and a half press ups before collapsing in a heap. How can you do half a press up, I hear you asking, and the answer is that you can’t – it was just my trainer being kind and generous. Over the next weeks I spent the longest six hours of my life working with small weights, boxing in pale pink boxing gloves, wielding a medicine ball, discovering my stomach muscles again, stretching and – my favourite – going to the duck bridge on a gloriously sunny and breezy day to run up and down the steps and the slope on either side, doing push ups on the rails of the bridge. And all the while my impossibly slim and patient trainer, Nic, was at my side, encouraging, boosting, inspiring and most important, timing. ‘Only fifty seconds to go’ she’d say breezily, looking at her stopwatch, when I was on the point of wilting, sure there could only be five seconds to go. But there was something about her standing there timing me that made it possible to find the strength to finish even if there was a danger of expiring on the spot. At the end of the six sessions, she tested me again and found that I could do twelve press ups and twenty sit ups and my recovering heart rate was much improved. I felt stronger, fitter, healthier with better posture and generally glad to be alive. Great result and money well spent!

Will it Continue into the New Year?

Can I keep going in the new year to maintain my fitness without the reassuring presence of Nic right next to me with her stopwatch?  I really do hope that I can because I’m tired of catching glimpses of myself in shop windows with that little bulge above my waistband – I want it completely and totally GONE by the end of January. So it’s goodbye to cakes and pastries and hello to that flight of steps by the duck bridge in 2013.

Now, time to walk really fast up the hill to the French Market – does that mean I can have just one of their extremely delicious croissants when I get there?

For more information about personal trainer Nic and what she has to offer see:

http://www.nextlevelpersonaltraining.co.nz/