Ow. Ow. Ow. No, that doesn't hurt.

I am pretty sure my trainer is trying to kill me. At least, that's what my hamstrings and glutes tell me every time I move.

As I mentioned last week, we have a new girl working out with us three times a week. On Wednesday of last week, she was lamenting on her soreness from Monday's workout, and I mentioned to her, completely innocently and without the slightest hint of proposing a challenge, that I almost never get sore. That's it. I never get sore. Nice to know. End of story. We moved on.

But little did I know, that innocent comment sparked a fire in my trainer, who took it as a personal challenge. As I unknowingly went about my day he was plotting a workout so difficult, so exhausting, and so treacherous that I would surely be sore the next day.

I wasn't really. It was hard, but not that hard. But I made my mistake halfway through the workout when I overheard him telling someone else what I had said and realized that he was trying to break me. So I was sure to let him know what a cinch it had been.

The next morning, he was waiting for me.

I wasn't in much of a cardio mood and my knee kind of hurt so I was a bit of a slacker that morning. But it turns out its a good thing I saved my energy because 30 minutes later I wanted to throw up. We started out with some normal stuff: shoulders and chest work. And then we moved on to squats. Deep squats. With the barbell, loaded. Four sets of 20. "Twenty?" I gulped. "Twenty," he responded.

So I grit my teeth and got to work. They weren't that hard. And then I heard the deep voice of my trainer from across the room:

"Lower."

I went lower.

"Lower than that."

I doubted my ability to squat any lower and be able to stand back up.

"Heather, your butt needs to touch your heels."

I'll be honest - I didn't do four sets. I did three before he pulled the plug and we set up the step and some plates for step-ups. Three sets of 15 on each leg, 25 lbs in each hand. Pshaw. I do this stuff in my sleep.

After that I went to get some water and asked when he was going to break out the hard stuff. But in the time it took for me to fill my water bottle, he had replaced the step with a weight bench. We took it from the top - three sets of 15 on each leg, 25 lbs in each hand.

Okay, this was hard. I sneaked a peak at my heart rate monitor - 181. Not bad! But I seriously wanted to hurl. From across the room I heard, "that bench is pretty high, huh?" And before I could stop myself, I answered, "it's not that bad."

But in reality, my legs were shaking, I was losing my grip on the plates, sweat was getting in my eyes, and I was making my 33rd New Year's Resolution to start keeping my damn mouth shut. I stepped my 30th step and wiped the sweat off of my face.

"Okay, what now?"

I don't even remember what we did next. It was all a blur. All I remember is waking up Saturday morning and thinking, "yeah, he got me."

But I'll never tell him that. Shhhhh!