This Workout is a Motivator

Do you remember those bug zappers from childhood summer nights, those blue florescent things that would lure flying insect in with their neon glow and then proceed to turn around and zap the “the tar” (to use a Southern workaround for cursing) out of said naïve bug?  Well last week I was the bug and a nasty strain of norovirus was the zapper.  

I felt fine Tuesday morning and worked out with my trainers and buddies in the afternoon, even though I was beginning to feel nausea creeping in. At one point Jeff and Marisa had the eight of us lined up in planks and I looked up at Rick and said, “I feel like I could throw up.” But, I took this as the sign of a good workout and kept going.

Wrong!  Although it was a good workout, I later on found myself really, really sick.  This was very frustrating for me because: one, stomach viruses…SUCK and two: I haven’t been really sick in a long time.  Before I lost weight, I used to get sick about every six to eight weeks with something or other…but I’ve discovered that a pleasant side effect of weight loss is an improved immune system.  Needless to say, I’ve gotten used to it and therefore make a really lousy and cranky patient when I do get sick.

I was also pretty cranky when I got back into the gym this week and realized that missing a workout for three days puts you about two weeks behind where you had previously worked up to.   It’s so frustrating to not be able bounce right back.  My inner toddler wanted to throw something until I thought about all of my friends who have come back to working out after maternity leave and have been like rock stars.  Three days out of the gym? Wah wah little baby, I said to myself, these ladies have been out of the gym three months and look at their positive attitude and come-back skills.

So I have been doing my best to push myself past this little speed bump on the journey.  That’s not to say I haven’t said a few “workarounds for cursing” while at the gym this week.  We have an inside joke in our workout group that sprung from a network-censored version of the movie Resident Evil in which Millie told us that the TV editors had substituted a certain curse word for the benign word “motivator.”  So for instance the TV version would be like, “I’m gonna get that motivator.” Or “We need more motivating weapons!”

Pass us in the middle of one of our workouts and you’re likely to hear renditions of this in the form of, “This workout is a motivator!” or “I’m tired of these motivating burpees!” or “He’s lifting those weights like a motivator!”  So we complain. We feel frustration (especially after being out and having to work up to certain levels again).  We make faces at each other. But, we also say “motivator” and get things done.  It helps!  J