My first Day at Ballys: 01/03/13

I joined a gym.  The dirty Bally's.  Turned out it was $10/ month plus a yearly fee of $25, but no contract.  I read the whole thing over and over and couldn't figure out how they were going to fuck me so I am really excited to find out how they are gonna go about it.

I checked out the Bally's on my way home from work last week.  I ride my bike 5 miles to and from work.  I tuck my sock into my pant leg.  I wear a yellow reflector vest.  I look good.  So there I was helmet in hand, hair ruffled, neck warmer peeking out from my collar, waiting for a tour.  The trainers were chomping at the bit to show me around because you get a free personal training session and I am pretty sure they thought they just found their perfect candidate.  The guy who "got me" literally said "I got this."

It's a pretty nice place for $10 a month, well, $12/month with the fee.  Here is what my perfect gym will have in order of importance.  1. Space 2. Bumper plates  3. Decent pull up bar 4. More than one squat rack 5. punching bag.  This place is big, but the only open space is carpeted. There is a studio but it's used for classes, one of which, the one underway when I was there, was lessons in body building poses.  Surprisingly they did not recruit me to take part.  No bumper plates so I can't miss reps. Not a big deal.  The pull up bar is duct taped on to a sumo rack.  There is also a typical gym pull up grips thingy so whatever. 4. More than one squat rack, two to be exact. 5. No punching bags. I'll make do.  They have a decent amount of stuff and a nice rowing machine that I want to get better at. 

So I met with my trainer on Sunday after I made him promise to work out with me.  He told me later that he doesn't like to judge people, but he judged me in my bike gear.  I was really worried that he would get me into some stuff that I wasn't into, but it was a good workout.  We did some circuits of 1. lunge variations, 2. push up variations, 3. battle rope variations 4. ab variations

Then we got into deadlift which I havent done in a while.  I was worried about my back but proceeded very recklessly regardless. I finished at 270 lbs.  It felt ok, but Im glad I didnt go any higher.

We finished with (3) 20 25 lb plate burpees and 20 side to sides over a step.  Good workout.