Fitness Assessment

My employer has recently started a healthy living push. I call it a push because they previously provided a discounted membership at the YMCA, or reimbursement for fitness classes up to a certain amount. In May of this year they started offering discounted membership to the YMCA and another facility AND reimburse for fitness classes up to a certain amount. When they rolled out this new program they had a wellness fair and I signed up for a fitness assessment. I figured it would be your usual; hold this contraption and it will tell you how obese you are, let's discuss your eating habits and have you start eating rabbit food and taking supplements, and finally you should be doing this certain workout because that is what all of my clients are doing. However, it was free, so I signed up. We had to reschedule my first appointment due to a migraine, but last night we finally got together, and boy was I wrong about what this entailed. Not that I think anyone reads this blog, but I don't want to reveal my fitness guy's name without his permission, so I shall call him FG (for "fitness guy"). He sat down with me and asked me a bunch of questions about my health history, my exercise background, injuries (there was a lot to discuss here), diet, and goals. Then he had me do some basic stretches and just movements of my body while he watched and did some minor touching of joints and muscles. He was able to determine that my quads are really strong but that my glutes and hamstrings are most definitely not. He also gave me some exercises that will help my shoulders and posture. My shoulders partially sublexate anytime my arm is pulled on. In normal person language that means my arms come slightly out of socket when pulled on. So I now have stretches and exercised for my shoulders/back/chest and my hamstrings/glutes to do three times a day for the next several weeks. He suggested that I only have dessert twice a week. THAT is going to be challenging. I have a weakness for sweets. Primarily chocolate, but I won't discriminate. If someone offers me dessert, I pretty much always say yes. As a matter of fact, I track my calories through myfitnesspal.com and will eat less food to make room for dessert. I think I may have a problem! :) I'm going to try to cut back with the ultimate goal of having dessert twice a week, but I can't just quit cold turkey. Finally, he told me to stop running. My knees are bad, my back is bad, and I've given birth naturally. All of those things are reasons not to run. He said that running is horrible for women who have had children, but even more so based on my injury history. He suggested doing cardio on the elliptical, bicycling, or swimming. He was happy that I have been doing 45-50 minutes of cardio and that I tend to do intervals, but wanted to change it up a little bit. He suggested doing a 1 to 3 ratio of really hard core burst to consistent pace, but to only do 6-12 bursts. I was kind of surprised at this suggestion, but I am looking forward to trying it. Unfortunately, Aiden was up a ton last night and ended up in bed with us where he still didn't sleep well. We are trying to figure out what is going on and how to get our awesome sleeper to sleep again, in his own bed. So, for the first time in over a week, I did not get up and head to the gym. I'll probably regret not working out this morning, but I brought my workout clothes with me to work so I can go at lunchtime if I want to. Today is the cycle pump class I love, or I could try out the new cardio routine that FG suggested. I guess we will see what the day brings.