More fun with kettle bells!

"I can't breathe," said Pamela, sweat pouring down her forehead.
"That's good," responded the Torturer "You'll lose more weight that way"





As I drove up to the YMCA parking lot, I saw my team hopping up the hill leading to the lot while swinging the kettle bell up and down between their legs. They looked like characters in a grown up version of Romper Room. Carlos stood by with his characteristic Torturer smile. I was tempted to keep driving, but then he spotted me.

"Um...what exactly are we doing today," I asked when I met up with the group.

"Working the core."

"Okay..." I said doubtfully as I grabbed a kettle bell and set to hoppping.

I spent the next half hour hopping like a five hundred pound bunny and trying to avoid swinging the kettle bell into the family jewels. Then, Carlos relented and let us into the gym to exercise on elliptical machines and normal gym equipment.

I was never so happy to see the elliptical machine!

Hump Day!

It's Wednesday and I'm beyond tired. In 32 minutes, I have to take off to an afternoon of court in the Imperial Valley, but it's hard to motivate oneself to travel to 120 degree weather. I look forward to court, but the walking from the parking lot to the court house feels like a leisurely stroll in an oven.

But, responsibility calls...

Torrey Pines Death March and Return of Ruben

(In the above picture- Ruben is in the blue, I'm the muscular man in white, the torturer is wearing black, and Pam is on the other end of the camera! Others remain anonymous due to witness protection rules...)


This Saturday morning, Carlos the torturer got us together at Torrey Pines for a nice stroll down to the beach. It was a beautiful day, there was a wonderful blue ocean and there were only occasional sounds of rattlesnakes along the path.

My friend Ruben, who quit after the first meeting of the weight loss challenge, showed up with an eye towards entering the next competition. Also present were a couple members of Carlos' team, another trainer, and the professional cyclist from the last competition. There were also a couple significant others- two quiet puzzled looking men who seemed to wonder what exactly their women had gotten them into. My significant other, she of the thin waist line, stayed at home watching Lifetime and relaxing.

Torrey Pines is a beautiful place to go to the beach- clean sand and ocean as far the eye can see. Unfortunately, Carlos had us start some two miles of windy dirt trails away from the beach. I don't want to say that he exposed us to dangerous wild life, but I think the following picture speaks for itself:



Pretty scary stuff, no?

It takes a brave heart to be a member of the YMCA weight loss team.

The Smith Machine will Smythe you!

Here's a guest column from the always welcome Pam.

“Good thing I work from home as any hope of putting on deodorant this week has faded as I can no longer lift my arms past my hips. I wonder if they taught the torturer in school to say, “You can do it” to everyone he meets. And when are we going to get those t-shirts so the 100+ fit, svelte, tone YMCA members surrounding us in the gym and class understand our motivation rather than thinking we are in the wrong place and should be in the pool wearing bathing caps and skorts.” Pam

Yet another victim of the torturer. As I went through the workout Monday night, I thought about how working out can be a humbling prospect when you are out of shape and heavy like I am. At 19, I was never the biggest guy in the gym, but was always one of the strongest. Now at 38, I'm definitely the biggest guy in the gym! But, I'm nowhere near the strongest.

There's too much that goes wrong when I hit the weights. Today we used the infamous Smith machine, which is a cage with different resting points for the weights that you'll be lifting. I used to love the Smith machine, but Monday was a bad night for me and Smith.

When I tried to squat, I felt a pain in my knee and was relegated to doing squats that consisted of sitting down on a big box wooden and getting back up again. It felt like the equivalent of getting up out of my lazy boy at home, except without beer.

When I did a bench press in the Smith machine, my back ended up seizing up, which limited me to the lightest of weights- maybe a full third of what I could lift before.

The worst part of the workout though is probably looking at the mirrors that are spread throughout the gym.

"Look at that jelly belly trying to lift a tiny weight over his head," I say before realizing that the jelly belly is me!

The competition and a guest blog

First a guest Blog- from another member of Carlos' team. Pam is the emotional leader of our team and her good humor keeps us on track.

If I wrote down the measurements correctly then the good news is I lost inches in my chest but apparently it sunk to my waist! I told Carlos that next weigh in I am wearing Spanx like the celebrities use on the red carpet. I do feel better and maybe it is the beginning of when I melt away. Thanks to the team and the “torturer” (after his class last night I am finding it difficult to lift my arms for my weekend dining) for keeping me motivated to keep going.



Pam

Now, on to your regularly scheduled blogging.

On Friday night, we had a team weigh in and a competition with the other two teams. After two weeks with the torturer, you might think that we were all too banged up to compete with two other teams- but the other two teams have their own torturers..er..trainers. They are allegedly pushing their teams just as hard as Carlos is pushing us. The official results aren't in yet, but it seems like every team has lost weight and inches.

The competition required us to see which team was fastest on three machines- the bike, elliptical and the treadmill. It was only a twenty minute interval, so we all went all out. Carlos would come around to offer encouraging words- "Is that really the fastest you can go? Are you still warming up?". Just kidding. He was actually very supportive tonight.

I actually ended up second in my event- the bicycle. I was 0.07 miles behind the first place finisher, an employee of the YMCA that I suspect has competed in the Tour de France before.

I was proud of the team effort, though we somehow ended up last among the three teams. The way I see it- we're keeping a low profile until the final competition.

Next up, a hike in Torrey pines this coming Saturday. I invited the wife to come along. "Hiking?" she asked with a tone of voice that made me realize that I'll be joining the group alone. The wife prefers to hike on a treadmill with mp3 music. I prefer to hike in my dreams, while napping on the sofa...

Kettle Bell Hell

"Go for twenty. Okay fifteen." said Carlos the "torturer" with his usual smile. His bald head gleamed with sweat and I imagined for a moment that I could see my reflection there- a 6'2" man struggling to lift a tiny kettle bell over his head for what seemed like the millionth time.

"Come on, you can do ten." Carlos barked. Ten? I was aiming for five at this point.

I struggled to lift the tiny kettle bell, but ended up dropping it on the ground in defeat. It was an hour and twenty five minutes into the workout and I was beyond tired.

The workout had begun with a session on the elliptical machine.

"Exercise at your level 7," Carlos intoned, meaning that we should find our internal level at which we were expending 70% effort. But, looking around at my group, the sweat was pouring down at an external level of 9 or 10.

"At least, we're not doing kettle bells," I commented to a team member.

Every five minutes, one of us was taken from the elliptical machine and subjected to a...well...torturous workout on the treadmill. The workout consisted of walking up a step incline while shoulder pressing a heavy medicine ball. By the end of my turn with the medicine ball, my shoulders were sore and I was out of breath. I could have happily ended the workout then, but the session had just begun. Carlos pulled out the devious little contraptions.

"Kettle Bells?" one of my workout partners said in disbelief. Carlos just smiled.

The kettle bell was designed by Russians almost a hundred years ago. It is an innocent looking thing- a little ball with a handle that weighs almost nothing until you lift it over your head a few dozen times. Then the weight feels heavier and heavier.

Carlos had us alternate lifting the kettle bell with various exercises- squats, running while carrying weights, etc. My shoulders ached with each repetition and I thought the workout would never end.

Then a surprise, the torturer relented.

"Okay," Carlos said finally "Just walk around the building and the workout is over.."

There was a skip in my step until he handed me two heavy weights to take with me. You'd think I had enough weight to carry...

But, I survived to workout and to blog another day.

My jealous mistress

Yesterday, I missed my first team workout. I was stuck in a desert courthouse over in Imperial County. I was defending a client in a multi-defendant drug case. It was a tough case in which a preliminary hearing lasted over a couple days. There was a good deal of good lawyering and the case drew me in obsessively.

Today, I was the last lawyer to cross examine the special agent on the stand. I watched four of my colleagues, distinguished criminal defense lawyers, pepper the agent with questions. It was fun to watch the different styles- an outraged lawyer, followed by a methodical questioner, then a folksy examiner and a scholarly lawyer. Good lawyers come in all sorts of styles. Finally, it was my turn. It's hard for me to analyze my own style- maybe a plus size version of Jimmy Stewart with humor?

Under my cross examination, the agent admitted various facts that helped my client. I won't go into them here as it's an ongoing case, but I received a few compliments from court staff and it felt good to have held my own amongst my colleagues.

Unfortunately, by the time I left Imperial County, there was no way to make it to my workout. I had a quick dinner of chicken, drove home and fell asleep with a little feeling of guilt.

Next workout on Wednesday. The torturer awaits..

The Y in YMCA stands for Yowww!

Yesterday was the revenge of the trainer. Our trainer Carlos, affectionately known as the torturer, came up with a workout that made all of us in the weight loss team regret that we'd ever heard of hamburgers or of a life before healthy eating.

The three of us in the team that showed up to the 2nd workout were all late. Probably a mistake. Carlos looked at us with a smile, sweat gleaming off his shaved head.

"Let's get started."

He cut short the warm ups and led us outside behind the building to a long concrete fence that looked like the setting for a rifle execution. Carlos' smile grew wider as he explained that we were to do wind sprints.

A wind sprint is the YMCA's answer to waterboarding. You run as hard as you can for 5 yards, touch the floor and run back to your starting point, touch the floor and continue the process for ten yards, fifteen yards, twenty yards and twenty five yards until you drop. When I was in the boxing club, wind sprints were relatively easy- at a hundred pounds lighter, I moved through them like greased lightning. Now, the only thing greased about me was the breakfast sitting in my belly.

I stumbled through the first five yards, staggered through the next ten yards and somehow dragged myself through fifteen yards. I don't know how I made it to twenty and twenty five yards. By the time we were done, I was ready to fall over (maybe into a nice sofa). However, Carlos took us straight into squats, kettle bell exercises and a myriad of other exertions.

All in all it was sheer torture for legs that already have a tough enough time carrying me around. By the middle of the workout, we were all exhausted. By the end of the workout, we were beyond exhausted.

But, strangely enough, I awoke the next morning feeling strangely refreshed and full of energy. It made me think that there might be something to this exercise racket.

Weight loss challenge and booze

Some twelve years ago, I entered law school as a relatively skinny man. Little did I know that my life style was about to change. My circle of friends changed from the undergraduate hoops playing gym rats to a circle of carne asada eating, long island drinking future lawyers and such. Slowly, I changed also. Instead of starting out the day with a workout- sometimes it was a meeting at Denny's with a study group.

It just got worse as I actually entered the profession of law. Suddenly I could afford to eat out daily and there were many more happy hours.

This brings us to last night. After a strong weekend of eating light and a couple tough gym workouts, I found myself out with one of my closest buddies- a supersized lawyer that we'll call Jake.

We went out for drinks after a long day in court and at first, I stuck to my regimen. I ordered roast chicken for dinner, while he wolfed down a steak salad, a plate of cheese and most of a pizza. But, then the stresses of a day in court got to me. I had a couple drinks to relax and before I knew it, a couple drinks turned into several.

I shudder to count the calories from yesterday, but choose instead to concentrate on tonight's workout in hopes that I'll get back on track again.

The road to skinnyville is lined with many detours.