Free Abdominal Workout!

When the night crew arrived for shift change, the office was regaled with more information regarding the new LT being pulled over on his bicycle.  Apparently, when he was initially pulled over, he told the MP that he worked at the hospital and needed to get to surgery.  After all that and he still received a ticket. 

My room was dark with the exception of the dim light from my new roommate’s phone as she was talking with someone as I entered.  My roommate was asleep across from her, so I carefully made my way back to my area sans light.  It was FaceTime Monday, so I quickly dropped everything I was carrying and grabbed my iPad.  I turned my small lamp on and dialed in to Dad.  I guess my roommate couldn’t handle two people talking on the phone because shortly thereafter she got up and went to shower.  It is normal for her to nap after work on Mondays and get up when the room gets too loud, so I was not concerned and continued with my conversation.

My phone call complete, I began the process of settling down for the night.  It was going to be an early morning, so the earlier I got to bed, the better.  I could not go to sleep yet however because not all my roommates were present and I was waiting for a work related phone call.  My roommate returned from her shower and went straight back to bed.  Moments later our other roommate returned and the next thing we know both our new roommate and our other roommate on their phones.  That was when my roommate finally had enough.  She put on her PT’s and left. 

About an hour later she returned.  The new roommate was sleeping, the other roommate was on the phone still with her TV on in the background, and I was lying in bed wondering why I had yet to receive my phone call.  I sent a text to the night crew asking if they had the information I needed to pass on to the LT trying to get a flight out of here.  They had yet to check.  Ugh, but at least I reminded them and established a texting method of communication so as not to disturb my roommates.  Around 11pm, I finally received the message that there were no flights tomorrow.  I quickly passed the information forward and rolled over. 

The next thing I knew, my alarm was making loud noises and I could not find it.  I was drained and did not want to wake up, but I had to go to PT.  I made it out to PT in time for formation and did not realize how stiff my back was until it was time to warm up.  I miss our old warm-ups that consisted of rotations, stretching, and exercises.  Today’s Army warms up with lunges, bending and reaching, squat benders, windmills, and basically a lot of back exercises that my back does not appreciate so early in the morning.  My recommendation is to bring back the stretching and then go into the new warm up.  Just a thought from the peanut gallery. 

Once we were done warming up, the NCOIC of the formation announces that we are to do PT on our own.  Wait, you got us all out here to release us?  A few Soldiers took to the track that surrounds our PT field, a few others took off in the direction of their room, and the rest turned towards the gym.  I looked at my roommate, “You ready to go back to bed?” I asked her. 

“Naw girl, let’s go to the gym.”

“My bed sounds more appealing, it has blankets.”

“Come on, let’s go to the gym.  We’ll do twenty minutes on an elliptical and call it a day”

I found that to be a reasonable request and walked with her to the gym.  The gym was packed!  I did not have the option of a treadmill, but I was able to hop on the last elliptical for about twenty minutes.  I went to find a towel and sanitizer to clean the machine and ran into the personnel NCOIC.  She invited me to join her in a brief abdominal workout.  I like working my abdominals, so I agreed.  It was a good decision and a bad decision all rolled into one nod of my head.  We started with 80 sit ups, next was a minute in the plank position, followed by 30 cherry pickers (feet off the floor crossed, lean back, touch the floor on your left side with both hands, touch the floor on your right side with both hands, repeat), 30 toe touches (feet up in the air, lay on your back, reach up and touch your toes), 30 kick ups (lay on back with hands under hips, legs straight, feet six inches off the floor, keep legs straight and lift towards the ceiling and kick up, return to start position), and finally we did 30 frog kicks (feet off the floor, lean back, hands shoulder width apart behind you, kick feet out straight, bring them back in, repeat).  She wanted to do three sets of these.  I never thought my abdominals could go into muscle failure until today.