that was "fun"

now as you know, I have been training with Mistress Pain (aka Oli from HypePT) for a while now and she is a great trainer. She works me hard, kicks me in the bum when I am stuffing around and on the whole really is incredibly patient when it comes to putting up with my whinging and crapping on. Especially when it comes to doing shoulder press (Oli calls it "The exercise you always lose your shit in"). Grumble.

There is really pretty much only one thing where we don't see eye to eye  - maybe two things, but I am not going to talk about our differing opinions on egg white only omelets here. The main thing is this - her idea of the word "fun" and mine are pretty much as polarised as you can go when you are talking in an exercise context. My idea of fun is something like maybe doing an egg and spoon race or perhaps going to lawn bowls where you drink lots and no one gets overly excited about the actual "sport" you are playing. When I bowl up to group training, I am not expecting either of these but I do find it somewhat cruel when Oli announces we are going to have fun. Before I get the chance to whip out the sunscreen or even a spoon, she then chucks approximately 1000kg of weights in the form of barbells onto the oval and my dream of a "fun" exercise session dies a quiet little death as outwardly I smile and mutter something like "awesome. I am sooooo pumped". And this is what we look like at the start of a class - the one looking most happy is Mistress Pain, because she knows EXACTLY what she is about to do to us

The list is long, but here are a few things that have come under the "fun" banner in Oli's workouts

• Burpees - these are not fun, they were invented by some sadistic bastard whose mum either didn't hug him enough or too much. I came to this conclusion because doing burpees as a girl has a whole new level of suck than for boys. Unless they have man boobs. Because let me tell you the slapping noise your boobs can make as they slap down into your stomach was enough once for one person once to turn to me and say "what that your knee cracking?? that sounded really bad!" was waaaaay too mortified to admit the truth. Even if you have a flat stomach, the "girls" jump around in a most unladylike and frankly uncomfortable way. I am slowly coming to the conclusion that they were originally called "boobies" but it got changed to make it sound less rude.
• skipping - seriously???? I am one of the most un-co people I know and skipping just fills me with dread. My sense of balance is terrible and let me tell you, lives are in danger once I am armed with a skipping rope and an instruction to "jump out 50 as hard as you can". I am pretty sure I look like some kind of demented rodeo rider who has lost their horse and instead has decided to use her lasso to whip herself and those around her until sheer exhaustion and being tied up in knots forces her to stop.
• Running - of pretty much any description. My most memorable amount of "fun" that I had was in a fitness test involving "suicide runs" or "malcolms". In Mistress Pain's world, it goes like this - witches hats set out every 10 meters up to 100 meters. Run to first hat, do three squats or pancakes then run back to start line. Then run to second witches hat, do 3 squats, run back to start. Run to third hat etc etc until you have run and back to each of the farking witches hats and back to the start line. As you get back to the start after the witches hat set at 100m, that is 1 lap. I GET TO DO 4!!!!!!!!! some of the really fit people in my group can do this in 16-18 minutes. I take around 26 but I feel like  complete shite the whole time. Plus once I finsihed and promptly threw up - into my pony tail, which had fallen forward over my face. The lovely Nicholas very gallantly offered me some of the water from his bottle to wash it out. So yeah. NOT FUN.

And just in case you were wondering, this is how we looked at the end of the class that day

By the way, Mistress Pain, the lovely Trishy, Jon "call me Austin" and I are off on the Kokoda Challenge. Like us on facebook and please, please, PLEASE sponsor us. I am sure it will be F.U.N.