My Nemesis

This machine is the current bane of my existence. Do you know the rotary twist? Have you met him? He lives to torture me and he is a professional. He is the one thing at the gym that I absolutely dread. If you're not familiar with the rotary twist, allow me to introduce you. You sit on this machine and grab hold of the handles and then twist while pulling a certain amount of weight. And it is evil. I feel like I'm willingly strapping myself into a medeival torture device everytime I sit down on it. Probably because I find it very nearly impossible to both breathe, twist, and suck in my abs at the same time. I'm sure I'm quite a sight because I get this strained look on my face as I try to concentrate on doing all 3 at the same time. Unfortunately, I'm not kidding. I sit down, hold on to the handles, and think, "Okay. Suck in. Twist. Breathe, dammit, breathe!" And I do that 30 times. It wouldn't be so bad if my trainer hadn't made a big deal about SLOWLY twisting back. If I could just twist like I'm doing some kind of sick version of "Twist and Shout," I'd probably be okay. But noooo, I have to concentrate and focus on the muscles. And the 30 layers of fat that are covering those flab-tastic muscles are really opposed to moving, much less being concentrated on.