Life Comes at you and from there it is all about the choices we make, how we deal with those choices and how we act and react to the people and things around us. My goal: Happiness. I surround myself with happy people when I can. And if by chance I bring some happiness to others along the way it just goes to show; It Is What It Is

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Let's Talk Exercise

This morning I took a beginning Zumba class at the local gym I belong to.  If anyone wanted to watch a comedy skit in the making they only needed to be outside the room watching the seven women inside struggling valiently to follow the instructor in moves that wiggle the hips, thrust the pelvis and generally move the body in ways I don't believe my body has ever moved, nor, honestly, ever wanted my body to move!  I mean seriously!

Lets start at the beginning.  I hate to sweat.  Sometimes the weather makes it so my body needs to cool itself so it perspires, but why would a somewhat sane and otherwise normal person purposely set themselves up to be uncomfortable and in for pain?  I know some people say that they feel great after they exercise and feel horrible if they do not exercise.  Let me emphatically state that I am not one of those people!  The only reason I subject myself to the ritual of getting myself up early and getting my body to the gym is because if I did not, my shape would be BLOB.  As it is, it often feels like daughter of blob!

There are exercises I do like.  I love raquetball.  My obvious reason for this is that I get to smash something and the ball never has to be chased too far away!  To me this is a fun way to spend an hour.  However the club I belong to has no courts, and I have not played in about 12 years so I probably would need to relearn to be any good, or at least passable.

Another exercise I like is actually dancing.  I love to contra dance.  Get instructions, keep swapping who you are dancing with, spin around, move, and everyone seems to be having a good time.  In this area there are some wicked good dances and often there is a live band and plenty of people to dance with ( I might do a blog on this some other time so I won't go into too much detail now).  Problem with Contra dancing is you do need to have other people, and after the third or fourth dance I need to sit down or throw up from all the spinning.

There are exercises that I absolutely despise - for instance, the exercise bike.  Very similar to the treadmill in that you do a lot of work to GO NOWHERE, but worse, because when you are done your butt hurts.  If I am going to ride a bike, I will go with my nice padded granny seat and feel some wind in my face, not just sit in place.  Group aerobics is another of the things I hate.  Nothing worse than feeling like you are going to die than doing so in a room of fifteen year olds who are ready to go another day and a half with an instructor screaming at you the whole time to "pick it up ladies, no use having sagging parts now".

Anyway, so here I am in the class, younger than most of the participants by an easy 20 years (except for the stick figure teaching the class who can't be more than 25) and not able to do any of the movements.  Yes I can position two -  right foot right, lift left put it back down and bring right foot back, then repeat to left.  The foot motions aint the problem.  I definitely do not have the swing of the hips thing happening. And its not so bad in slow motion, but play the music up to tempo and I might as well be running the boston marathon!

I think I will stick to my water aerobics and Wii (not together).  Round is still a shape!

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