Thursday, November 3, 2011

Jessica's Journey...November 3rd

Today I learned that I need to be flexible.

The last few days I have been doing my warm-up at home before I leave for the gym. My floors at home are just a little bit cleaner than the floors at the gym and I feel a little bit better about laying on my carpet than the rubber mats at WOW.

I decided to do everything at the gym today. Mostly, I was tired and really just wanted to get to the gym, get started and get the workout done today. I also wanted to do some additional stretches because I was a bit tight in my legs and knew that I needed to fix that before I started today.

I got my layers on (cause it is about 30 degrees when I leave in the mornings right now), ate my breakfast in the car on the way to the gym and obeyed all the traffic signs and laws on my way. :) (I really did!) I was ready for my day.

I open the door to the room that I usually use to stretch and look down at the floor where the mats are supposed to be and guess what, they are gone! Who takes 3 huge mats out of a room and 1 huge mat out of the women's area at a gym? All that was left to use were these little, tiny blue carpet squares basically. I can sit down on these and my legs are longer than these little mats. There are tall people in this world and I am one of those people.

I had a nice chat with others that were also shocked at the sudden disappearance of the mats. They must have seen the look on my face because they gave me a few comments that were pretty much what I was thinking in my head. Then, I just moved on. I put my butt on the little mats and did the best that I could. I didn't feel as stretched out as I wanted to feel but it was better than nothing.

Friday morning, I will be back to stretching at home before I go :)

I have a feeling that the mats will reappear at some point but the gym that I go to doesn't always communicate the best and likes to give us members surprises. One of those surprises a few months ago was the lack of hot water. When I say "lack of hot water" I really mean "no hot water". Some days there were signs that said that there wasn't hot water, some days there weren't. Getting ready at the gym in the mornings, including showers, was a nice wake-up call when those showers were ice cold. There is always something at the gym that doesn't work too...elliptical, row machine, bikes.

There was a lady that I met a few months ago that had more of an attitude and liked to vocalize her opinions loudly. She was pretty fed up when the water decided to turn to ice and she thought that the gym was just gross and dirty. I had to agree that there were times that I didn't want to touch the floor or certain areas of the locker room but for the price that I pay for this gym...I can't complain too much. I am pretty sure that this lady called public health and I know that she stopped her membership. She told me that she was going to one morning as we were both getting ready to head to work. This lady also reamed out a few of the workers that came in her path of morning fury.

When something doesn't go the way that I want or isn't quite up to my standards I can do one of two things. 1) I can be flexible and just go with the flow or, 2) be a version of this lady that I described above.

I think I would be happier with myself if I was just flexible so I'm going to choose that option. I've been the person that has been yelled at because someone was unhappy with something that I had no control over. I know how that feels. I'm sure the people that work at the gym don't have much control over certain things and I know that they work hard. At 5:30am, there are people cleaning the floors, cleaning machines and the locker rooms are usually clean or were cleaned at some point in the middle of the night. Talking nicely to someone is a better way of communicating rather than yelling at them to change things.

Today's workout update...I am sore. I am sore in places that I didn't know I could be sore. My hamstrings are yelling at me right now!

Here is what I did at the gym...lateral squats, push up variation, dumbbell push press, cable reverse wood chop, four point supine bridge, and then intervals on the elliptical. I was going to do intervals on the bike today but all the good bikes were being used so...I was flexible :)

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