Last night my trainer John Bolesta brought me up to the second floor of the tennis center at Saucon Valley Country Club. The club recently renovated the center to include two first-class floors for fitness: one for classes and free-weight exercise, and the other for circuit training. 
I must admit this is where my threshold for exercise is tested. Just looking at this impressive display of equipment-12 state-of-the-art Nautilus machines-for circuit training, I feel incredibly overwhelmed and little bit intimidated. Thank goodness I am working with a trainer, as I have no idea how to even sit on most of these properly.
The Circuit Training Center at SVCC
As we make our way to the first machine, he signals for me to sit down. I signal back in wacky hand gestures that I have no idea how. He laughs. I find I really like working with a trainer. He keeps me focused and allows me to be silly. If I were on my own, by now I would have sat down and tried to pull weight that was way too much for me and I would have been using all the wrong body positions and muscles in the process.
After I am properly positioned in the machine, I proceed to do what I think are leg exercises. They are not. In reality, they are actually core building and posture defining exercises. I am using weight in the form of resistance, but I am instructed that I need to be engaging the muscles in my lower abdominal region as the
The Tennis Center at SVCC
main facilitator of the exercise.
After a couple of tries (okay, like a dozen) I finally got this move down. It involved just the proper tilt of my head, the proper placement of my shoulder blades, and the correct tucking of the pelvic bone. Not any easy thing to do; my body is resisting with every tweak and turn. I am instructed to push through it and I do-until I execute the movement the right way.
Now, this was not a bone crushing or crippling-type exercise. I felt in control and challenged in the right places, but I did not feel spent. In fact, as he tells me to proceed to the next machine, I say I am ready for more on the first one. He says, “Who’s the instructor here?” (We like to joke around.) Again, he needs to repeat the mantra of his method, “It’s quality, not quantity.” This he had told me before, as he is always very careful to explain “why” I am doing what I am doing. He says this is his pet peeve when it comes to most workouts: There is too much emphasis on reps and not enough on the detail of the movement. It is this that helps define posture and subsequently build core strength. P90x, he says, is tearing people up. I am surprised, as this all I hear people talking about these days. (Oh, remind me to tell you what he says about crunches next time.)
A p90x'er
It’s funny. I thought we’d do the entire circuit in that session, but that was never the goal. Once we had done rotations on the first three, we were done for the night- and I did the right things the right way.
I think I am going to stick with this for a while and be patient as he says. Change will come. Stay tuned …
