A few weeks ago, our small Wednesday lunch training group was introduced to the new JuggernautPT recruit, Mitch, freshly arrived from New Zealand to join Gary's team of trainers. Gary had been talking very highly of him, so I was looking forward to that first session.
And as far as first impressions go, let's just say that it was pretty clear from the start that Mitch wasn't there to make friends with us. How do I know? Well, I just know that instructing, three minutes into his very first session, an exercise involving 55 grunts could not have been a friendly move. And yes, you read correctly, that's 55 grunts!
For anyone out there unfamiliar with grunts, they are a cardio excercise that starts in a push-up position, has you leaping and then jumping up in the air with arms stretched and knees to your chest and they definitely are a JuggernautPT favourite. If you can't quite picture it, you'll just have to take my word for it: doing a couple is a breeze, you think "how hard can this be?", but once you've done 5 and over in a row and your heart is racing (not to mention how silly you look doing them), you'll start considering adding the word "grunt" to your list of dirty words, never to be mentioned again.
And, to give you a bit more of an idea, I usually consider Gary to be a pretty hardcore trainer, and the highest number of grunts he's ever asked us to do in a row would have been under 20.
So, let's get back to Mitch and his 55 grunts. To be honest, they weren't exactly in a row. Basically, it went like this: 2 straight punches - 1 grunt - 4 straight punches - 2 grunts - 6 straight punches - 3 grunts and so forth, until we got to 10 grunts and 20 punches. All this with boxing gloves on (I'm not sure if grunts are actually harder with gloves on, but they certainly don't make it easier). So, 55 grunts and 110 punches for our very first exercise with our brand new trainer.
I can honestly say that by the end of this I was feeling a little freaked out, not to mention vaguely delirious, all too aware of the fact that Mitch was also going to be my new personal trainer (more on that later).
In the end, as tough a session as it was, we all made it through and felt we had gotten an awesome workout. And maybe my first impression was wrong. After all, we were more than happy to come back the next week for more!
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Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau
