An Exercise in Itself

I don't think I set foot in a gym before I was 26 years old. As far as I can remember, I've always felt awkward in the space (it's less now but it depends on how familiar I am with the space). I didn't exercise a lot and if I did, it took other forms: like the time I joined karate lessons or my walk-jogs in the park. I only started going when I started my graduate program, not from a place of wanting to exercise but rather knowing that it was both good and necessary for my health, physical and mental. It was a giant gym, a monument to the sports culture of the university. I mostly stuck to the treadmill and yoga classes but there was the one time I tried running on the indoor track and the other where we went swimming (and managed to somehow lock ourselves out of the swimming area).

In Chicago I've joined a women's only gym, which soon shut down. There's a gym so close to work that it's criminal to not use it (also given that there is a forever membership for a very low price and free classes). At first I only went for Pilates, I had no confidence that I could get through anything more strenous. But I've done more since: HIIT and cardio kickboxing. It's convenient but it gets repetitive. Especially the cardio class, where they instructor, fabulous as she is, uses the same playlist and moves every week. I'm in the group of people who need to be surprised by exercise moves; if I know what is coming it bores me and I find ways to be lazy.

So I joined another gym ha. It's twenty minutes from home (a ten minute bike ride), it offers hundreds of classes as well as a varoeva of them: water workouts; boxing; all kinds of yoga. Until December I was doing pretty well but then I had a bad fall on some broken steps and from there it all went downhill. I didn't return to exercise for three months (and while hurt, it wasn't bad enough to justify that).

I just started to sporadically go to classes again. Everything in my life needs me to go to classes and be healthy and direct my energy in a productive way and be able to eat healthier and simply to be less idle. Going to class is always a taxing mental exercise before the actual event. The amount of rationalizing that my brain does to get out of exercising is amazing. Some of it plain anxiety: if the class format is unknown. However, most of my experience with classes has been pretty great. Any instructor who doesn't tell people to pay attention to their body and what their capacity is, isn't a good instructor for me. Also my local gym is predominantly white (and yuppie I'd say): the instructors, the staff, the participants. Everyone. Not unlike the neighborhood so not a surprise. Finally, like most folks, I'm guilty of looking at other people's outsides and comparing them to my insides and finding that I come up short. But for now, I'm back on the exercise wagon.