After weighing myself this morning, I made a green smoothie and headed to the gym. I met with my trainer and after a brief greeting, he started measuring my body’s muscle groups. As soon as he was done, he walked me through the workout, pre-adjusting the Nautilus equipment to fit my body type. Then he measured my resting heart rate at 60 bpm.
I was starting to get excited. I thought the workout would be challenging, but nothing I couldn’t get through. At the time, I didn’t fully appreciate why the workout only takes 10 minutes. I mean there must be a catch, right? Well, there is. The intensity is hellish!
The first exercise was the chest press. I got on the machine and pushed up slowly. This took about 5 seconds. I then slowly brought the bars back to the starting position, taking another 5 seconds. I was so busy concentrating on doing each exercise slowly, I didn’t think about anything else. I didn’t even count the reps. Luckily, my trainer did.
I did 5 reps and as I struggled with the final one, I could feel my chest burning. This was only the first exercise. I wanted to quit, but my trainer encouraged me to breathe and give it all I could. Meanwhile, my body was screaming at me to stop. I took a quick breath and continued to push against the bars and moved them up about 2 inches. My trainer urged me to keep going. After seeing me freeze in place, he told me to lower the weight back down SLOWLY. Even though I felt like my chest was about to explode, I did as he said.
We moved on the lat pull down machine. The machines were right next to each other, so my rest time was around 15 seconds. As soon as I got on, I started the lat pull downs and felt relieved that my chest was no longer on fire. After 3 reps on the lateral machine, I realized this was going to be a repetitive process. The pain had returned and was now in my lats and back. There was no escaping it and I barely completed 5 reps.
I moved on to the shoulder press – more burning pain. I completed 5 reps on the shoulder press.
The biceps came next and I felt somewhat relieved. I’ve done slow reps for biceps before and I felt they were easier to do than some of the other exercises. I did 6 complete reps. After biceps were done, we moved on to the leg curl machine. The leg curls proved difficult, but I got through the set, finishing 4 reps. Then we moved on to the leg press machine.
The leg presses proved to be the most challenging for me. I work out my legs once a week and it’s usually a light workout. The leg presses were anything but light. Doing the reps on this machine proved to be the most painful out of all the exercises. After completing my set of leg presses (a total of 6 reps), I could barely walk. I just sort of wobbled over to a chair. I had given it all I had and now I felt light headed. I sat down in the chair next to the leg press machine. My trainer measured my heart rate again and it was 140 bmp. I felt like the room was spinning. Since the intensity of the exercises is really high, most people throw-up their first time. I was not to be the exception.
It happened shortly after I stood out of the chair. I had gone into the bathroom to throw some water on my face and while I was standing over the sink – I felt my stomach kick up some of the smoothie I’d had for breakfast. I regurgitated about a handful of it. I then lay down on a bench and rested for 5 minutes. This made me feel somewhat better.
My total workout time was only 9 minutes and 26 seconds, but due to the brief rest time in-between exercises, this workout was truly horrendous. You may think I’m exaggerating – I want to assure you that that is not the case.
There were times during the workout I wanted to take it easy, but I couldn’t slack off because as soon as I did – I would hear my trainer say, “Slower” or “Push it, come on.” As the exercises progressed, I felt like my heart was jumping out of my chest – I could feel the adrenaline all over my body. The fight or flight response at its finest.
Welcome to high intensity!
