“You’re like a machine.”
It was the first time a woman had ever said those words to me under any circumstances.
The context here was towards the end of the F45 Challenge, when for this session we were divided into teams of three and asked to complete a specific goal.
If I may say so myself, I think I was the most productive member of the trio, and that compliment only came after doing so many box jumps.
If she had met me five weeks ago, she might have concluded that if I were a machine, I would only be useful as a component.
I received my invitation to participate in the F45 Challenge on January 2nd. I was caught in a moment of weakness at this time of the year when things were going in a positive direction.
My heart was drawn to the matching of numbers. I am her 45 year old and here was his 45 day program to get me in shape. The only drawback is that writing about it has to expose itself to public ridicule.
The 8:30am appointment to tour Grange Gorman’s F45 studio also included an invitation to attend either a 6:30am or 7:20am class. I hesitated. There’s no need to start too early.
The challenge was to begin on February 5th and, determined not to be thrown into the deep end, I decided to embark on the so-called pre-preseason.
In my opinion, I was quite healthy. Last summer, I ran her 10 mile in her 1:17.17. Although I haven’t moved towards my big goals yet, I continued to encourage myself.
If you jog along with 2km on the rowing machine and do some upper body weight training, you’ll certainly have a running start to the F45 challenge.
Alcohol was getting into my head until work took me to the Algarve for Ireland’s pre-Six Nations training camp at the end of January.
You know I had to be sociable. I still went for runs and went to the gym in Portugal, but on my last night in Portugal, disaster struck and I fell ill, curled up in a ball, and wished I could die.
I made it in time for the team announcement before leaving for Marseille, but when I asked Andy Farrell if he wanted to ask me a question, an IRFU spokesperson brought me a bottle of water instead.
The only time I managed to get out of the hotel was to go to the pharmacy and the game, and that time I almost passed out in the mixed zone.
So you can probably guess that any enthusiasm I had for this challenge evaporated before it even started.
slow start
The first week, I wasn’t physically able to take more than one class. After that, I was physically unable to do anything.
I had never done a HIT session. For me, exercise was something I did at my own pace, ideally in my own company.
So it was an eye-opener to find myself face down on the mat as my over-eager classmates shouted encouragement.
Having already done your errands, you felt discomfort in your quads, just as you had been walking around for two days as if engaged in an immoral search for toilet paper. Getting in and out of stairs, cars or beds were not my friend.
Maybe the studio thought they had my back when I canceled the first two days of classes in week two. I didn’t really make a fuss, I just fell victim to another stomach bug transferred from my kids. Thanks guys!
Since then, I have attended classes for 27 consecutive weekdays, even attempting a 6:30 a.m. class several times. The weekend was for “recovery.”
So how was it?
Well, there was the League of Ireland angle that always comes in handy. One of the instructors was Karl Walsh, a former Shelbourne and Drogheda United player.
But given that most of our interactions happened while I was grimacing, there weren’t that many anecdotes shared.
This challenge made me realize that I probably wasn’t cut out for what I had been in life.
I’ve always been active and at one stage leading up to a marathon, I ran two half marathons, but I fell and damaged my knee. I struggled for years to cure it.
High intensity is another matter, but I got into it. I can only apologize for the amount of sweat that dripped onto the floor. The instructors were so proactive about telling me what I was doing wrong that I guess I didn’t have much time to spend with the rest of the class.
Ironically, after the first two classes, I never quite mastered the squat technique, considering that was my default body position, and my back was where it was supposed to be. I didn’t want to go to
But I kept trying and they kept correcting me.
progress
By the end, I was definitely better at push-ups and sit-ups than I was at the beginning, but I struggled with pull-ups.
I managed a few times, but then I found myself dangling from the bar with at least one of the giant rubber bands around my legs.
On my last day, the Thursday before last, I was able to deadlift 60kg multiple times. This represented a huge improvement from when we first entered the studio.
But I also learned that I can’t multitask.
When I was asked to count the number of times I did a particular exercise, I had no hope of remembering how many times I did it, even if the instructor gave me some instructions during the exercise. But thanks to his InBody scans taken before, during, and after the challenge, I had a more reliable record of how I fared from start to finish.
In terms of weight loss, after 1,305 minutes of intense exercise, I only lost 1.4 kg, which was a little disappointing, although I wasn’t counting.
But while I threw myself into the session, I took a more relaxed attitude when it came to eating, thinking that counting calories and grams of protein consumed was too much work for a father of three.
And as time went on, my sobriety wore off.
Dry January and even dry February are another story, but dry March was over the top.
If I tried a little harder, I might have gotten better results.
However, my skeletal muscle mass increased from 36.5 kg to 37.4 kg, and my body fat percentage increased from 21.8 to 18.9.
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There’s still work to be done, but the F45 Challenge gave me a jump start and showed me that there could still be life in this beat-up machine.
l Visit f45training.com/ie/ to find a local studio
