Everything in the gym was alien to me. There were weights, kettle balls(weights with handles), squishy balls, hard balls, straps, ropes, bars, pulleys and a variety of adjustable swing arm pulleys. There were also machines that looked fairly understandable because they had instructive pictures printed on them. Paul said to ignore the machines. He said they didn’t allow a free range of motion and didn’t promote “functional” fitness. The equipment we were going to use had no instructions printed on them. Paul was going to teach me how to use them.

We would have two different routines–A and B. Each would take about 50 minutes. Each would begin with foam rolling. Say what?

The bad news is that the web site for foam rollers says, “what is foam rolling and why does it hurt?” This was not an auspicious start for my poor tight muscles. But it was a beginning nonetheless.

After his initial evaluation of me, Paul mentioned he had taken a course in college on exercise for seniors. He explained that one of the key issues was struggles with proprioception. I struggled just to repeat the word, and I had no idea what he was talking about. Apparently it involves having an awareness of your body in space. Needless to say, if you have lived outside your body in your head, your proprioception is pretty skewed.

Not to fear, Paul told me, now we knew what to work on. First “functional fitness,” (getting off the couch, carrying the groceries, bending over to pick things up off the floor) and “proprioception” so I could know where I was. This would help with balance, an emerging challenge.

We agreed to meet twice a week and see how it went. He turned out to be nothing at all like a drill sargeant. I trusted Paul because he brought to mind the imaginary very helpful son I had never had as the mother of daughters. He was happy to have a woman his mother’s age actually be receptive to his ideas about fitness. We were off to a good start.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how to get my body to be “functionally fit” again. You can think about exercise a long time without doing anything about it! I really didn’t know how to start, so the best approach seemed to be no approach. However, I had mentioned to my grown (very fit) daughter that I was thinking about being more fit. She is very much a doer, so the next thing I knew we were at the local fitness club talking to the manager.

I liked the gym. It was small, clean, five minutes from the house and no one was wearing skin tight lycra. There were various ages of people there and various body types. So far, so good. I was ready to take the plunge and sign up for a month’s trial. My daughter, however, knowing me too well, encouraged me to sign up for the year. She also insisted that I needed a personal trainer.

Wait a minute. A personal trainer? Visions of screaming Jillian Michaels from The Biggest Loser froze me in place. “Trust me Mom; you need a personal trainer.”

So I met Paul.

I was a very active child, but then I became separated from my body and went to live in my head. This is a very common experience, I have learned since, but it meant I lost the physical strength I once had. I skated by for many years, but when I reached my 60’s, I started to lose what I now know is called “functional fitness.”  People started carrying my groceries, carrying my suitcases, opening doors for me, and in general reducing my strength even further as they were “helping” me. For the next while I will be blogging about my experiences–good and difficult–of the last two years’ time in a gym  working with a personal trainer, regaining my physical self.

I have also begun to put some poems up on the poetry page of this site. If you have previously found nothing there, check again.