First Official Workout

Because I was curious about what went on at these bi-weekly PT gatherings that are only during my regular working hours, I decided to go today. Went to work early so I could leave early and make it there by 1100. I was only a couple minutes late (time got away from me at work) and the other ten or so recruits were already breathing hard when I walked in. Petty Officer Jordan was leading this meeting... the next thing we did was pretty easy: going up and down on the balls of the feet over and over (40 times).

There were push-ups and squats and flutter-kicks and windmills and lunges. While doing jumping jacks, we kept repeating a silly story about 50 cents and an elephant: "I asked my mother for 50 cents to watch the elephant jump the fence; it jumped so high, it touched the sky and didn't come down til the Fourth of July. One, Petty Officer" (repeat up to 15 times... which can really make one lose their breath if they're not careful). Talking and jumping is not a good combo.

And then I learned how to do an 8 count push-up. Gosh, it goes so fast... I really do need to practice that one. And now I know why they are so disliked. From a standing position (one), squat on the floor (two), assume the position of a push-up (three), do a push-up (four), stay in that position and spread the feet shoulder width apart (five), move the feet back together (six), come back to a squat (seven), and then stand up (eight). Except it's fast and we were supposed to do 10 or 15 of them. It sorta felt like a thousand.

After we kept this up for about 40 minutes we then went down the hall and did pull-ups (well, some of us :) Then we came back in, stretched, and went on a formation run, twice around the baseball field behind the building. I got to be in front and we even sang a cadence about how my grandmother at the age of 92 "did PT better than you", and at the age of 93 did it "better than me"... at 94 I think she did it some more... by 95 she had died... it was rather fun.

And from all this I gleaned that I have a lot of work to do before September 21.

Right at the end of run he had us stop, left face, and say the Creed. We did some General Orders and then were questioned about what a CPO's rank looks like. There were a couple people there who I had never seen before that haven't contracted yet and were interested in a book or something so they could learn all this. So I passed on my Navy Knowledge page address to them. Maybe it'll help...

Oh! And I weighed in at 172 on the April Fool's Day meeting... and today I was at 168! Only one pound over my limit! Yay! Here's to portion size and exercising! And now for some more portion size and exercising... :)