When you're really young and not into sports, getting into shape can be very difficult. I know it was for me. Way before I discovered the elliptical trainer or Turbo Jam, I wasn't the biggest fan of exercise. The simplest thing I could figure to do for exercise was jogging. I wasn't quite sure how to maneuver myself around a track, so I would jog in place at home.

This was a time before iPods, before I even had a CD player, and before I had any semblance of fitness, so the experience was never very enjoyable. Even a simple 20-30 minute jog through my house was rather tedious. I remember this plan lasting only a few weeks before I gave up on it.

But recently, I was sifting through one of the many fitness blogs that I'm subscribed to, and this girl was talking about how she jogs in place as exercise. She said her most recent workout was for 2 hours in which she burned almost 1000 calories.

Intrigued, I went to my handy dandy calories burned calculator at caloriesperhour.com and calculated how many calories I would burn jogging in place. The verdict is, someone of my stats would burn 519 calories jogging in place for 1 hour. I was pleasantly surprised. Jogging in place burns approximately the same amount of calories as exercising on an elliptical trainer or crossramp for 1 hour.

So I tried it out. Even though I exercise regularly now and am fairly fit, with my bad knees and large boobs, jogging and running have never been my forte. I decided I would start with 15 minutes and then increase if I was able to. But with my iPod in and my TV blaring in the background, the first 15 minutes sailed by. before I knew it I was at 40 minutes and didn't want to stop. In that 40 minutes I burned 350 calories.

In my next jogging session I did another 40 minutes. I was planning on aiming for 60 minutes, but I was mixing my jogging with other workouts, so I could only do so much. For my next jogging workout I planned to jog first before doing any other workout.

The next day a friend of mine called me to go jogging at our local track. Actual jogging, not just jogging in place. I was hesitant to go, because the last time I attempted to jog at the track I was 20lbs heavier and hadn't worked out regularly in months. I had neither the proper clothes or the proper shoes. So after only two laps I was winded and my skin was chaffing like crazy. But once I got to the track, I took it easy and tried to go at a pace that was similar to my jogging in place at home. I was able to complete 10 laps, which equals 2 miles, non stop. Not only that but I was able to do the straight shot sprint my friend urges us to do from the track to the main road near our homes.

I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I can actually jog. I can credit my home jogging sessions as practice. But between the two, I prefer jogging in place at home. At least there no one has to see me, and I don't have to only jog. I can dance and do aerobic moves among other things. By the time my blood really get flowing, my jog actually isn't much of a jog at all. It's more me acting a fool and having the time of my life to my favorite songs.

The only down side is, because I favor exercising barefoot at home, the constant repetitious pounding on my feet makes them hurt a bit. For that reason I don't do my jogging routine everyday. I seem to be getting used to it though, my feet don't hurt at the moment. And I find that if I warm up with a work out tape my feet don't hurt by the time I start to jog.

So, I'm extremely happy to have a new exercise to add to my roster, and even more happy that it's an exercise that doesn't cost any money. I'm finding that in the few jogging workouts I've done my thighs have firmed up a bit. That's another big plus.

Do you use jogging or jogging in place as a form of exercising? Which do you prefer? What's your favorite form of exercise?

Last week I did a free trial at Bally Total Fitness. Contrary to my previous post about "sticking it to the man" to get fit, Bally does in fact have restrictions that prevent you from being able to just repeat trials at different club locations. Their restrictions are actually a lot more stringent than other clubs, because you are only allowed one trial membership per three years, while most other clubs allow a free trail once every twelve months.

But that's fine, despite my frugality, I plan on buying a gym membership as soon as I'm able. Now lets talk about my trial week at Bally.

The first day was Thursday August 19th, I was just sitting around contemplating about how I really wanted to go to a gym when I remembered my idea to take advantage of the free trial memberships of various gym franchises. I immediately went to sign up for Bally membership online. I chose Bally because it's the closest gym to my house and it's a fairly decent walking distance. Keeping with my frugality, I didn't want to pay very much to get there either. After I got the pass printed out, and the many distractions from my family (my mother was making dinner at the time, and I was designated the task of making sure the chicken didn't burn while she was out), I made it to the facilities around 10 p.m., and after I got checked in I had exactly 40 minutes to work out, of which I spent on the elliptical/cross ramp. Then I walked home, which was about another 45-50 minutes.

I quickly made a routine of taking the bus to the facilities and walking back home, in order to get me there quickly and then to allow myself a decent stretch and cool down. Especially after the second day, on which I spent a full two hours on the same crossramp. I believe the difference between the crossramp and the elliptical is that the crossramp doesn't have the long handles like an elliptical does, therefore focuses more on leg toning as well as cardio, while ellipticals can provide a more total body workout. The actual ellipticals where very odd, and hardly burned as many calories as I'm used to on an elliptical, so I avoided them.

On this particular day, I really got to check out the dynamics of the facilities. I'm very used to the overall gym experience being rather personal. At most other gyms I've been to, the machines are strategically placed so that no one has to look at anyone else. Many are a lot more state of the art, having those fantastic machines with the TVs attached, so not only do you not have to worry about anyone else, but you can also get in a fix of your favorite guilty pleasure in the course of a workout. I often find myself tuning into VH1 when I'm on such machines.

But this gym was fairly rudimentary. I guess I'm just spoiled when it comes to gyms. On the upper level, all the machines were crammed into one space, treadmills, crossramps, ellipticals, exercise bikes. The crossramps were in the back, so my view was that of all the giggling butts of my fellow gym goers. I avoided the upper level when I was able to. The machines on the lower level overlooked the weight machine area, so here there were mostly men. Men who spent less time exercising and more time oogling the female gym goers. Especially on the second day when there were female body builders practicing in the personal trainer room. I watched some of these men stand and stare for up to 45 minutes at a time. I personally was not amused. I understand it's a man's prerogative to look at attractive women, but that was overkill.

I toned it down on the third day, where I did only an hour on the crossramp. I'd made up my mind that I would focus on cardio during this trial. I usually focus on cardio at the gym, and usually don't begin adding weights until the second week, so there was no time.

On the fourth day, I completely forgot about the different hours on the weekends versus the week days and by the time I got to the facilities at 6 p.m. that Sunday they were closed. So my workout was basically, walking back home, and a 20 minute cardio video on exercisetv.tv.

On the fifth day, I did an hour and 20 minutes on the crossramp. By then I was in a stride. I figured out which resistance and incline settings I liked, either high incline and low resistance or medium resistance and low incline. And I was at a point where I didn't care who stared at me while I rocked out my newly updated workout playlist. I'm fairly sure this week in the gym took away at least 5 years off of my ability to hear.

On the 6th day, I began to experiment with the settings on the machine. I usually just did the manual setting and changed the resistance and incline myself, every few minutes. But this day I tried the weight loss setting, which I really enjoyed. It was a 28 minute program with a 5 minute cool down and alternated between low resistance and low incline and high resistance and high incline in even intervals. I did it twice and tacked on a few extra minutes for an even hour and 10 minutes.

On the 7th day, my last day, I revved up for another 2 hour cardio marathon. I alternated between the weight loss program and the manual setting at 30 minutes for a total of 2 hours and 20 minutes and almost 1300 calories burned. This day, I took the bus home as opposed to talking. I was tired.

I had one more day on my trial, but I wasn't able to use it because I was traveling on that day. But I a solid six days of gym access was pretty decent. Because of all the cardio, my appetite definitely increased. Bread and I were BFF this past week. I'd lost 3lbs over the course of the week but my weight has since fluctuated up since I haven't been working out as heavily in the past few days. Hopefully that will go back down once I'm back on my normal cardio video routine.

Overall, the experience was decent. However, I'm not quite sure that I would actually join this particular gym. The pros of these facilities were that they are closer to my home. The walk back home was just as enjoyable as the workout itself. They have lots of machines and lots of variety, even though I didn't really take advantage of that. The cons were that there were often many machines out of order. And the time constraints. I'm a nocturnal exerciser, and the hours for these facilities don't quite adhere to that. They are open from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday-Thursday, from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday, from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday and from 6 a.m. 6 p.m. on Sunday. Though being forced to work out earlier did have its benefits, I would still like the option to be able to workout later if I need to. I personally may need a 24-hour-gym, or at least one that is open until about midnight or 1 am. And as I mentioned, the machines were not as up to date as I'm used to. And the pervvy men, I could do without them.

Since I can't do any more trials at Bally, I'm planning on venturing out to other gym franchises and checking out their trial memberships. I plan on going to 24 Hour Fitness, Gold's Gym and New York Sports Club. The latter of which has a 2 week free trial and a 30 day trial for $30, I plan on doing both. I've done trials at NYSC before, I really like their facilities. Then, I'll start venturing out into other lesser known gyms. Then, I'll look into buying a membership somewhere.

But I'm really glad that gyms offer these trials. Not only is it a benefit to get a few days of free workouts, but I actually learned that, that particular Bally may not be the gym for me. Which would have been a lot tougher pill to swallow after signing a contract.

Have you ever done a trial at Bally Total Fitness? What was your experience? Trials at other gyms? Have you ever tested out many different gyms before deciding on one?