You Sound Like My Date Last Night...

That's what Maya said to me last night, when I told her (or rather selected as a response when she asked how I was doing) "You're lucky I'm here." Maya, my personal trainer. My Playstation2 virtual personal trainer.

Yourself! Fitness has been the perfect solution to the lack of inspiration provided to me by the Self Challenge. The way I see it, the Self Challenge offers a great log to keep track of the number of workouts I've been doing, and some good preliminary motivation with its requirements: keeping me on track for at least two 25-min strength workouts a week and three 30-min cardio. However, its offerings in terms of strength workouts are quite slim. In fact, just one offering really: one measly confusing little 25 minutes strength workout. And not a very good one, at that.

But I digress. When you first put on Maya, she greets you and puts you through a personal fitness evaluation. This consists of entering all the general stats, height, weight, age, gender and resting heart rate, then a fitness test: 2 minutes of jumping jacks (waaaay harder than I thought it would be! My calves started cramping a bit at 30 seconds!), take your heart rate again, then as many as you can do (up to a set maximum) of the following: Sit ups, push ups, and squats.

I was able to complete the maximum of sit ups (60) and squats (50) but only 15 out of the 40 max push ups. Finally, there was a little flexibility test, where sitting on the ground with your legs out in front of you, you walk your hands towards your feet on the floor and see how far you can go. I'm pretty flexible.

Once this is done, Maya gives you her suggestion for what your focus could be. For me, she shockingly suggested an Upper Body Strength focus, but I then had the option to change, if I so desired, to Weight Loss, Cardio, Core Strength, Lower Body Strength or Flexibility. I decided to go with her suggestion.

Next, she showed me the week plan, and suggested I work out on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for 45 minutes at a time. However, this part too was completely customizable. Again, I stayed with her suggestions. Finally, she offers you a full meal plan for a suggested daily calorie total.

Once this phase is done, you can go to your workout or you can go visit the meditation garden (a lovely garden scene where Maya leads you through a 20-minute or so yoga routine). On any given day, you can go with the recommended workout for that day or change it to any other type. You also get to choose your music and workout space and whether or not you have any equipment available (your choices are free weights, balance ball, step and something else that I can't seem to recall).

I have yet to try the yoga, but I've done several workouts with Maya: Core, Lower Body, Upper Body and Flexibility. They're great! They change frequently, and Maya is tough! Although she always asks how difficult a workout was and I've definitely noticed a fine tuning process. After I bitched about how hard the military narrow armed push ups were (as in, I couldn't even complete one), she has me back at regular positioned girlie push-ups. And that's about all I can handle... For now, at least.

Coming up next: Week 2 in review!