Activities

First Gym Class in 16 years!

/ Shelby Anderson / Leave a comment

download It all started when Mr A embarked on a “I’m getting old and need to quickly get fit” campaign. Admiringly  he has kept up with the whole gym thing for 6 months now. Quite impressive I must admit, seeing as  though neither of us had seen the inside of a gym for about 18 years! So in my attempt to ‘keep up’ and  after much nagging I eventually relented, bought myself some way too expensive pink and grey Nike  tekkies, a huge T shirt (to hide the fat, which it definitely does not do!) hideous lycra pants (that roll  down  from my non-existent waist line onto my hips every time I bend over!!) and went to a gym class. 

 I  decide  that to ease my way into what I thought would become my new lifestyle, I would do a slow,  easy,  low  impact class like pilates or yogo to start with.  On arriving I checked out what classes were  on the go  and  immediately made my way to the said class, which was the only one on at this ungodly  hour of the  morning. (7am). There was an instructor, another woman and myself in the class, which I thought would  be great as I would get individual attention! (and did I get attention!!) We started with the typical warm up of breathing and rolling down etc (I only know this is typical because I have seen this on TV ). We then moved on to more strenuous stuff like lying on mats and lifting our legs to the side…very slowly and alternating legs. Then it was stomach muscles, arms and back muscles, all done with first the left side and then the right and supposedly in time with each other.

For someone who has very little co-ordination, cantdownload (2) clap and sing at the same time and still doesn’t know my left from right, this was quite a feat! After 15 minutes I started looking at the clock and could not believe how slow the time was going. I was convinced that I had already done 2 solid hours already!! When lunges started, that’s when the fun began! I could not keep my balance AT All and needed to take a short rest. (difficult to do inconspicuously when there are only 2 people in the class!) Still, not to be outdone, I pushed through for the full hour amid very heavy breathing, sweating, brow wiping, burning muscles and frequent gulps of water.  In this time I could see the instructor doing the slight rolling of the eyes and the impatient side to side turn of the head, with the very quite, but distinct clicking of the tongue, (she is a yoga instructor and has to remain very calm and serene at all times) while I tried desperately to look just a little bit dignified flopping all over the place. To images (10) my shear relief the class ended with the instructor saying a cheerful “see you in the moooorning…”. ‘Hell  yeah…that’s what you think’ were my immediate thoughts. I could hardly walk but held my head up and  slowly, painfully and thankfully made my way to the change rooms where I was very amused (and slightly shocked) that  there were a number of women of ALL shapes and sizes romping around naked with no trace of  embarrassment and very little modesty. An eye-opener for someone who would rather shower with her  clothes on that get naked in front of ANYONE!! It was here among the chattering of weirdly naked women  that I was told that I had just done a Level 4 yoga class!!! There ARE ONLY 4 levels dammit!!!  Not  being able to walk or lift my arms for 2 days, I decided to give myself a ‘gym’ break…until today…