I was reduced to a puddle of goo.

I do not work for the Monkey Bar Gym or have friends that work there - this is my own personal opinion.  Grinder

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For anyone looking for my City Council blog go to MelotteforCityCouncil.org.where you can learn about my adult thoughts and who I am!   Not just another pretty faced blogger  :-)
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I knew I was in a worked of trouble when I was gassed after the warm-up.  Luckily everybody around me was also gassed and smiling and I saw no blood so I figured I would just gasp for air with the rest.

I was my first "class" at Madison's Monkeybar Gym.

My first contact with a human other then an instructor was in the locker room and a tattoo dude (I think he did work at a tat place) said to me "I wonder how he will kill us today!"  SWEET  AWESOME - that is exactly what I wanted to hear - honestly it was.

Like so many other people I have started working out after a break 20 times in my life - lots of good intentions but after a few months I get bored and find excuses on why it SO HARD to drive that mile to the health club.Oh man I would have to put on shorts and that would be SUCH a hassle.

After 20+ years of working in a cube I knew that my muscles were leaching out of my body at 10% a year but hey - if you have no muscles to begin with how bad can it be. Seriously though I was pretty buff in the day and I missed those times.  Now at 59 I knew that I was not getting stronger sitting around so I needed to really get serious and places like The Princeton Club were not working.

I mean come on. When you are on a treadmill and see people treading and chatting for an hour and then come back a year later and those same people are STILL overweight . . . how much good is it really doing.

I needed something else.  I wanted to climb rocks, I wanted to tip over cars, something that used my whole body.

So I was turned on to the Monkeybar Gym in Madison.  I wanted to get serious. I needed to be pushed.

WELL - I got what I paid for and it's awesome.

The class had about 20ish people. Not the kind of people you see at typical gyms.  I'm not sure how to explain it.  I guess you could say  . . . non-lycra athletes in all shapes and sizes.  Big ones that were probably football players 15 years ago but got out of shape, little ones, in shape ones, the whole gamut but none of them looked like workout junkies with bulging biceps and necks. But they did look solid.

The one thing I did notice was that they were all in good shape AND, not showing it off.

I opted to do the recommended strength program before I started the conditioning cardio program.  Reason is that strength is slower paced and you learn the ropes (literally) before going to the faster paced "boot camp".

So it began. We started with some simple calisthenics, hey I can do that.  Walking on hands and feet like a . . . monkey,  then crab walks and holding poses and jumping jacks and burpees (I had a personal FAIL on that one!) and so forth and after it was done I could barely breath.

The nice thing was that there is a small rest between each exercise.  You get your heart up and then rest BUT, continue to move.

Once we were "warmed up" we all chose different size kettel-bells and started some actual strength training which was pretty "easy" and fun.  Everything was fun as the group as a whole was having fun (in a rapidly deteriorating strengthy way). I loved it as there was no screaming and so forth but everyone was working hard. Jackie was my partner and I followed her moves (although with 4 pounds less weight - sigh).  This is something they express, everyone helps everyone else, it's a family atmosphere. We're were all in this together.

SO - we did those routines for a while switching weights and utilizing different muscles.

FINALLY we were finished . . . . I thought.  I muscles were clock watching but my brain was enjoying the workout.   BUT WAIT - the REAL FUN was about to happen.

Time to work on the legs a little.   OMG!!

We were in for some lactate acid** flushing.  Always a good thing right?  But first, we needed to get some lactate acid to flush.
         

** During power exercises such as sprinting, when the rate of demand for energy is high, glucose is broken down and oxidized to pyruvate, and lactate is produced from the pyruvate faster than the tissues can remove it, so lactate concentration begins to rise. This is when you start to burn.

We needed to burn! And we did. 

Note, this is one thing I wish the instructor would have told us about. WHY he was putting us through our own personal hell . . . maybe he did.

The way to flush the lactate pain is to have well-oxygenated muscle cells. SO - create pain in various squat exercises and then jump (or at least try) increasing O2 to your lungs.

It was a killer but you know?  It was fun.  Like a disaster party.   I was on a 100 mile bike ride once on RAGBRAI with 25mph head winds the entire way. It was torture but there were 10,000 other bikers all in the same boat. It's not so bad when you have company.

After that we were done

I think this is the draw of the Monkey Bar Gym.  If you are serious about getting in shape and want to be around other serious people of all types - not the typical knuckle scrapers or the lycra clad treadmill gabbing walkers this is the place.   It's fun like a disaster party. We're all in this together, all in pain together, all gasping for air together all getting in REAL shape together.

Note - several of the class told me the yoga classes were outstanding. Have not tried it.

Price? Well, there is a sticker shock but think about it. It's a personal trainer pushing and instructing you,  not someone surfing the internet that glances up every so often.  It's $149 a month OR, OR, a 10 punch card for $200.  That is $20 a session which is not bad at all.

again - if you are serious about getting in shape - bang for buck it's awesome.
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NOTE from the day after -  I'll talk about DOMS** tomorrow and where it comes from.

**DOMS - Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (I will now try to get out of my chair). 

Grinder