Picking up heavy things! And putting them down again safely!

[wshaffer]

So, I finally bit the bullet and hired myself a personal trainer to work with me on strength training. I've been wanting to do more weight lifting, but I've been hampered by both general self-consciousness and uncertainty about whether I'm doing the exercises correctly.

Did my first session today, and, wow, it was definitely worth the investment. Some of the things I learned:

• With proper instruction in form, I *can* do lunges and squats without killing my knees. Doing squats without falling on my ass is still a bit of an issue, but I'll get there.


• Doing lunges really made it clear that I have a strength imbalance between my left and right quads. Doing lunges is also the best way to fix this strength imbalance, so, yay, lunges.


• Deadlifts are really awesome. It's hard to explain, but when you do them right (even with the little tiny weight that I'm using), you really feel like a lifter.


• Maybe this is normal, but I find working some muscles much more uncomfortable than others. I happily can (and did) work my chest and back muscles to failure without a whimper, but every time I start to feel the burn in my abs, I want to curl up and cry like a little girl.

Anyway, I fully expect that when I wake up tomorrow morning, my quadriceps will have decided to secede from my body and I won't be able to put my arms over my head, but right now I feel absolutely fantastic.