Today was a very long, but informative day. I was actually at the gym for about 3-1/2 hours. However, only about 2-1/4 was spent exercising. For the rest, my buddy and I explored a few new areas of the gym, looked at fitness clubs/classes, and checked out the schedule for the rock climbing wall and ski trips. We plan on trying our hand at rock climbing on Monday. Of course, I was afraid there may be a weight limit, but the workers said there wasn’t. So, I am all set to climb a rock wall!

Anyhow, the actual workout was fairly diverse today. We started out with 35 minutes of walking, followed by about 10 minutes of elliptical machines (a bit lighter on the machines today, but only because we were eager to play some other games). Then, we spent about 30 minutes playing volleyball (lots of running chasing after the ball to raise the heart rate!). Not to mention, since it was the first time we’d played in years, our arms got really, really sore (and very red)! Next, we went to a small, nearly secret weight room at the end of a long hallway. It is almost more like a girl’s workout area since it is more private and there were a lot of balancing/core building items. One really interesting machine was like a massive vibrator that you stand on/do push ups on, etc. We only stood on it for less than a minute each, but I could swear it actually helped clear out some of the blockage in my head. I mean, I felt tingles up my spine and all through my head (it actually kind of made me dizzy). Apparently, the machine is designed to help build neurons. Quite interesting, although it feels really weird. We spent another hour playing ping pong. Although not extremely high on caloric expenditure, it is great for developing coordination, and gives us time to talk and relieve stress. Actually, during this time, we’ve decided to schedule buddy study sessions for next term. Also, we have become exceedingly better at ping pong in a very short time (not to mention better at using our left arms, since we have been switching to our left arms for at least 10 minutes in every sport that we’ve tried).

exercise time: 2-1/4 hours
calories burned: easily 450