My rockstar dancer personal trainer!

Today I had the first of 3 scheduled 45 minutes personal training appointments after it had to be canceled and rescheduled twice (well 3 times considering I was late today and we had to reschedule it after her next client). When I scheduled the appointments I told my gym to hook me up with the "hard core trainer". I'm on a budget and I was only able to afford the 3 session package thus I want to make the absolute most of it.

Well I was waiting to meet I read her biography posted on the community bulletin and I was pleasantly surprised to find out she's a famous rock star! Well, sort of........

She plays in an indie band that released an album last year and hit the top 20 on college radio stations. They've also gone on a few US tours and have opened for more famous bands. I am a fan of some indie groups and I got excited that I'm going to be working closely with such a person. When I came home I googled them and wathed their performances on youtube, she still looked quite feminine and classy while screaming into the mic and bopping her head.

Aside from being a rockstar, she's also a professional dancer and even attended some dance academy in chicago. She's been teaching dance classes for 8 years now and I was excited to know that she teaches the hip hop classes at my gym and will be starting adult beginner ballet and jazz classes as well. My experience with dance classes at my gym is that they're taught by amateur gymnast college girls who watched some instructional dance DVDs, but I will definitely start attending her classes!

The first session was more of an assessment of where I am and where I want to be. One thing that was really discouraging is when we did the bike test we discovered that I may be overestimating my abilities given my heart condition, we actually had to stop it short. The only thing my cardiologist told me with regards to activity restriction is "just don't train for the olympics". Apparently, when my heart rate is in the 160s, which is very moderate cardio, my blood pressure spiked to 190 which isn't healthy. She strongly advised me not to go over a heart rate in the 150s range when doing cardio; I'm normally in the 170s so I don't understand how I'm supposed to be getting an effective workout with that limitation.

I'm having this renewed motivation and excitement to get in shape now that I have all of these opportunities with such a professional, especially because I felt like she was really listening to me and knew what she was talking about. The next session is in a week but I plan on going to hip hop class tuesday!