Today the gym rat met the wellness coach. Yes, as I am new to the area YMCA (see a previous post), I wanted a bit more familiarity with the equipment as well as a longer walk-through of the fitness center than I’d given myself so far.
Why, you may ask, might I want to have a wellness coach trail around with me explaining stuff I might have already discovered on my own? Of what benefit is someone teaching me equipment I’ve seen in plenty of gyms wherever I’ve lived.
For someone who is blind, the setting matters as much or more than the actual equipment. Are the weight machines or cardio apparatuses like treadmills or stair masters close together or farther apart? Does the gym where you are exercising encourage you to spray down the grips and seats after you’ve done a few reps and moved on to the next weight?
After meeting Lori, the wellness coach assigned to me, we talked over my general goals of strength training and weight loss. We also discussed my need to workout on areas that are relatively easy to navigate. When your in a gym, of course, you have several types of machines from the freeweights-bar bells, bumdbbells, and benches where you sit or kneel when balance the weight along with lifting it. Sivex equipment offers you a stable machine, working on your upper or lower body, which has weights you lift by manipulating a rope cable while changing the amount with a pin or knob.
Seeing that I will be doing full-body workouts each time I am in the gym, Lori walked me through a safe pattern from Machine to machine that I spent time memorizing. Then, yes, we discussed the need to wipe down the equipment with a spray bottle and towel I can retrieve at the desk in front of the fitness center.
At this particular YMCA, the increments of weights on the Sivex machines are consistent-starting at 30 pounds and moving up by 20 each time you move your pin to the next weight. A knob ups the amount by 5 pounds each turn.
With Lori there, I learned more grip positions on each upper body machine than I’d known before. These hand positions help you workout subparts of your body even with using the same machine. So when working the chest press, the difference between the normal grip and the two others is a matter of moving my hands from the normal grip of palms facing each other to makoing fists around the handles, knuckles facing down toward the floor. A third grip is a bit higher on the machine and puts more pressure on my wrists.
Working with a trainer like Lori gives you the opportunity to learn better ways of breathing and a pace at which you take each rep during a set. Often, doing rapid reps during a set is only beneficial if you know how to hold your body position and control the weight rather than letting its bulk cause you to sag or tighten up. On many Sivex machines, vfofor example, your lift will take half as long as bringing the weight back to its starting position. Coordinating that with my breaths really helped me relax into the rhythm of each exercise and focus on as much of my body as possible.
It’s also a joy when working with someone to share how our blindness contours our perspective. Since she and I walked across various distances, I gave a quick intro to how my cane protects my ankles when moving around various pieces of equipment. If you are totally blind, use your cane to get around until you are comfortable with the layout enough to move from place to place without its assistance, if you choose to get to that point. Personally, I prefer to fold up my cane when I’m working each machine and then unfold it for times when I’m walking to the next place. When I’m running on the treadmill or the stair master, my cane rests beneath the machine and out of other people’s way. Yes, that means bending down to retrieve it afterward. For doing that, I shield my head and face with one hand while kneeling, then return to my natural stand with the cane comfortibly resting in my left hand.
When Lori and I were finished in the fitness center, I asked her to help me pattern my way between there to the locker rooms’ hallway and to the main desk. After a few trips between, I was ready for tomorrow’s resumption of my briskly joyful pace!
Boldly Blind 