The Gym and Early Morning Nausea
I’m supposed to eat a little something, before each of my workouts. I meet with my trainer, Lorenzo, at about 6AM each session… which means I end up having to get up around 5 so that I can get ready, make some food, and chow down beforehand. I’m also supposed to get to the gym a little earlier, and run for a few minutes, prior to the start of my workout (just to get the blood going).
I’ve discovered something odd about myself: I have a really difficult time eating early in the morning. My stomach will be growling, and I’ll feel hungry, but the act of eating leaves me a little queasy. Typically, I’ll make two eggs and have an English muffin; while I can finish off the eggs, I only get a few bites of the english muffin in before my stomach feels a little weird.
Perhaps it’s part of me being nervous, prior to heading in for a workout. It’s been two weeks, and I’m still pretty self-conscious every time I step foot in the place. Particularly when I’m training, where I’m doing things to the point where I can’t do anymore. Not being able to complete physical tasks in front of others… is a bit daunting.
Note: I’m eating now, as I write this, and it’s early. I don’t quite feel the same uneasiness, and I’m thinking it has to do with the fact that I’m not going in to the gym today.
On Tuesday, I had my second training with Lorenzo (we kept missing one another last week). I’m kind of glad that happened, as I was sore for a lot longer than I anticipated. We worked on a variety of things, mostly arms and upper body. I ended up doing a lot of work with weights on a mat: pushup position with weights on the ground, then lifting each arm perpendicular to the ground; lunge (knee to the ground), back up, squat, back up, jump (and repeat);
An interesting thing: my feet were hurting, as much as some parts of my arms. Lorenzo thinks it might just be how new my shoes are. It’s an odd part of my body to be reacting to the training – a little surprising.
I was stopping a lot during our session, and taking lots of breaks. There was a point where I asked to sit down, because my legs were just feeling a little wobbly. Lorenzo and I went to the front of the gym and I grabbed a seat to catch my breath. Another trainer came by, and said (in a friendly way) “Now that’s the workout I’m talking about.” I’m not sure if he was poking fun at me for resting, or if he was commenting on the nature of how tired I looked. I’m hoping it was the latter.
During some of the mat exercises, we started with heavier barbells (25 pounds I think). As I got tired, he switched them out to where… and this is embarrassing… I was using the lighter barbells. Maybe 5 pounds each? The girly ones, that look more like batons than weights.
I know that I’ve likely got unreasonable expectations for myself. The last time I stepped in a gym was probably nine or ten years ago. I mentioned this to Lorenzo, and he made me feel a bit better. He used the old rubber band analogy, and how we’re basically stretching my body to get to a point where I can do more. He told me he’s more concerned with higher repetitions, as opposed to weight, since we’re trying to increase my overall endurance. Eventually, the goal is to be doing higher weight and smaller sets of six (as opposed to the fifteen or twenty we’re doing now).
By the end of the workout, I was starting to not feel so hot. My legs were a little noodley, and I realized I was feeling a bit nauseous. This was another first. Looking back, I’m not really sure what the root cause was. In doing some searching online, the symptom seems to have a lot of potential triggers – low blood sugar, motion sickness, and regular overexertion. Lorenzo noticed this, and we chatted for a while and ended up ending the session a little early.
It’s odd, but the nausea thing actually makes me feel a little good (in hindsight). It’s an indicator to me that I’m trying hard. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t care to have this feeling for every workout, and will be trying to find ways to minimize it… but it felt like an achievement of sorts. A queasy kind of achievement.
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