Hooked on group fitness! (Part I: cardio day) 5/29/09

I don’t mean to be anti-social, but I have this attitude of the gym is a place to get my workout done and I keep my loner composure.  I also thought I have plenty of motivation myself and with low tolerance with loud noise, I basically thought I wouldn’t enjoy group fitness.  However with the amount of money I am paying to the gym, I decided to check things out.  Turned out some classes are pretty good although I stay pretty picky on yoga classes.  But finding out which class I can do on cardio day and muscle day was my mission for the last 2 weeks or so and I am finally ready to give summary here.

First off, it is difficult to find classes for cardio day.  I alternate Chris day (weight training) and Jeff day (cardio).  Chris’ program works on legs, chest, back, shoulders, bicep, ab all in one day.  Technically I should be resting my muscles to recover.  Even when it is advertised as Cardio class, it usually contains some kind of muscles.  Even my favorite Mockingbird Ultimate cardio class comes back at the gym and do some weight training.  Pure, non-weight training could be the following, spinning class, yoga class and step class.  I have only gone to spinning class once.  Tony seems more excited about me trying this out.  He was an avid bicyclist in college and asked if I wanted cushiony pants to ease my butt soreness.  I also need to learn so that I can challenge myself to bring heart rate up.  Yoga is good, but bad instructors cause more stress and unfortunately it doesn’t burn whole lot of calories.  And I JUST CAN’T do steps and other choreographed classes!  I went three different step classes, some more difficult, some supposedly easier and took time to research to find good animation sites for different moves from Turnstep LLC and thought I would challenge myself learning as brain exercise.  But it is just not happening and I am too content, patient and boring to repeat same movements for bringing up heart rate. 

Jeff’s program is turning out to be VERY difficult.  This is partly because my legs never get rested.  It is also possible my heart is getting stronger.  First, I ran out of resistance in big yellow Precor machine.  I can only go so fast thinking this is an hour-long battle.  Next I ran out incline walking 4.0 miles per hour on treadmill and had to speed up to 5.0.  By this, it means basically I have to run whole hour.  Stairmaster serves me well, but it is really hard.  Watching the time and heart rate never allows me to lose focus and it has gotten very challenging with more tiring legs. 

At the next entry, I will go into lots of fun classes that I can go for muscle days!