Your fun is my punishment

Met with the trainer again today. We did about 30 minutes of cardio on the elliptical and then she destroyed my arms and legs with weight training. I was proud of myself for hanging in there the way I did. The worst was the pull-ups, I loathe them. The best was the push-ups with weights...I felt like I've improved my strength.

Ever since high school, exercise always felt like punishment. Miss the cut-off man? Run foul poles. Didn't carry out the fake very well on a read-option? 100-yard-sprints. Three seconds in the lane for the third time this week in practice? Let's do some killers.

As an adult, exercise isn't really punishment anymore, but it is still really hard to find a lot of joy in the pain. I like how I feel afterward and I sometimes even like how I feel during the actual act of lifting weights. But for the most part, exercise is still just  hard. Cardio is the worst. I hate how my legs and body ache and somehow my brain and my body don't really work well during difficult cardio sessions. I want to push more and my body says..."um, wait. what is going on here? we don't move this fast. ever"

I love the MaxTrainer at home because its 15 minutes and it feels like you've actually done something in that short amount of time. I don't hate the weight training with a personal trainer as much as I used to and that is saying a lot. All in all, even though it doesn't feel like punishment anymore, it still feels hard. The people who love to workout are obviously wired differently than I am - but I would rather be uncomfortable and healthy than super comfortable and lazy. Especially now that I have kids and they notice everything. I want to be an example in a good way for them - not a warning about how not to live your life. So...I am trying. But thank God I don't have to run killers anymore.