From Daria to G.I. Jane

 You may know that I sometimes talk about going to “the gym,” but I’m guessing you’ve never thought of me as an athletic person. That is a correct assessment. “Exercising” has never been my thing. I’m one of those people who grew up dreading gym class, just trying to survive without something super-embarrassing happening, and trying not to get labeled as the weakest link on the team. 

Daria, my athletic role model

But just because I’m not athletic, I wouldn’t say I’m sedentary. I love a nice long walk at a fast pace. I enjoy hiking even more. I like riding a bike … on a flat, paved trail. And when I was in college and merely steps away from UMD’s state-of-the-art gymnasium, I was known to go over every now and then for a little ping pong. Oh, yeah!

Josh really got into exercising in college. He started lifting weights and then started running, like, for fun. He’s always wanted me to do it, but I derive zero pleasure from running, to the point that when I first joined the gym, I would walk for sixty to ninety minutes on the treadmill just to burn enough calories to have some pizza that night. Also, we didn’t have cable at home and the gym did, so that’s where I got to watch my HGTV. Josh talks about how running releases endorphins for him and he truly gets a “runner’s high,” but I don’t. I make it about ninety seconds before I check the time on the treadmill to see if I’m at least a quarter of the way done. Nope.

For about fifteen or sixteen years, I’ve been going to the gym to a) walk on the treadmill, or b) do intervals of about two minutes walking then three minutes of running, for thirty minutes, or c) use the elliptical with no resistance for thirty minutes, and possibly d) doing three rounds of arm weights with five-pound weights, about fifteen reps per set. The results from this exercise routine is that I look like someone who doesn’t go to the gym. While a ton of other women my age and slightly younger go to the gym the same time as me and drop their kids off at the nursery like I do, they then go up to the big gymnasium for a fitness class, where barbells and ropes and kettlebells line the floors…and I stay on the ground floor with the mostly senior citizens, trying to catch up with Flea Market Flip.

So when my gym, the Westminster Family Fitness Center, announced in January a special New Year challenge, at first I didn’t pay very much attention to it. But there the flyer was at the check-in desk, and my word-loving brain couldn’t help but read it. It was a passport challenge, with thirty squares, each with an activity or specific class or instructor’s name on it, and you had thirty days to get twenty-five squares stamped to be entered into a contest with twenty prizes.

My card when I was on the last leg of the challenge

Twenty prizes!?!

That’s the part that kept me staring at it every time I passed the desk. This challenge certainly would be a real trial. For one, how many people would have the time and schedule flexibility to make it to the gym twenty-five out of thirty days? How many people could mentally and physically stick with it? Or not screw up the scheduling and box themselves out of more than five boxes? Not more than forty, I estimated. So if I could do it, that would give me a fifty percent chance of winning a prize. I’m a betting woman, and I liked those odds.

And so, about a week before the start of the challenge, I decided I was going to do it. I signed up with the staff, then took a picture of the passport with my phone because the physical copy had to stay at the gym, and then I looked at my schedule and started planning it out.

I’m not going to lie: I was super intimidated. Twenty-one of these squares were for classes, and I had only ever taken one type of class at my gym — barre. This is not to knock barre, you get a good workout with muscle toning and it has greatly increased my flexibility, but it doesn’t get your heartbeat up. I also had stopped taking it for about four months due to our homeschooling schedule, and so I was afraid whatever strength and flexibility I had gained over my two years of barre had largely faded away.

I was certain I could do it, and nearly certain I would win a prize, so I made a commitment to myself to do it. Josh, who has always encouraged me to try new classes, was totally on board, and offered to take care of the kids in any way possible that allowed me to keep up with hitting my squares. So before the challenge even started, I pulled out my photo of the passport and my Google calendar and started scheduling classes and workouts for myself as if it was my part-time job.

I wanted to start myself off easy and work my way up to the more challenging classes. So my first three activities would be thirty minutes of cardio on Day 1, followed by a forty-five-minute Zumba class Day 2, and then “Light Dance” on Day 3. I would take the weekend off, and then hit my anticipated hardest class on Day 6 with Tabata, a sort of boot camp class taught by my super badass barre teacher Gabby that I never, ever would have taken if not for this challenge. Day 7, I had a doctor’s appointment and wouldn’t be able to make it to a class, and Day 8 I would do the five-minute Jacob’s ladder challenge with Josh there to coach me. Day 9, I would try Butts and Guts, another circuit class that people had recommended as a good way to ease into classes (but it is only offered on Thursdays). For Day 10, I had plans to go swing dancing that night and wanted to make sure I would still have energy by nightfall, so I scheduled myself a yoga class for that morning. Saturday morning I would take off, but on Sunday, Day 12, I would cover one of the “any Sunday class” squares with HIIT, or high intensity interval training.

“I can do this,” I told myself, over and over.

The first day went well, I did thirty minutes on the elliptical, which is something I usually did once a week anyway. Day 2, the Zumba class was fun, but it reminded me that I’m absolutely terrible at following along to dance steps. The teacher was super friendly and noticed I was new and told me just to keep moving whether I was doing the steps right or not. I was totally OK with that and saw this as my good deed of the day — helping all the other class regulars feel like dancing superstars and letting them get a good laugh out of me. On Day 3, Light Dance felt even more complicated than the Zumba steps. Not as intense as Zumba, but truly more like a dance class with so, so many different kinds of steps. Again, the instructor and the rest of the classmates were very kind and kept thanking me for coming to check out their class, imploring me to come back another time.

I was still really scared about tackling Tabata, so I used a lifeline: I asked my friend Jess to do it with me. Jess is a runner, and even more-so, a not-sit-stiller. She doesn’t “workout,” but she’s athletic and full of energy and I thought she would say yes, and she did! That took a huge part of the fear away. At least I wouldn’t be the only new person in class that day! Also, if I died in class, she would have my husband’s phone number to let him know he needs to come and collect my body. Problem solved.

You might be thinking that I’m going to say that I way overestimated how hard the class would be and that I had fun.

No. It was every bit as hard as I thought it was going to be, but with challenges I never would have even imagined. This week featured what my instructor called “the chainsaw.” The room was divided into two parts; on one side, you lifted weights, and on the other, you went through about eight different challenges in an S-shaped path across the gym floor. I should have written this all down sooner, but I remember this was my introduction to “wall balls,” these gigantic, puffy, heavy balls that weigh up to twenty pounds that you throw against a wall a couple of feet above your head. I accidentally did the twenty-pound balls my first two times because I didn’t know there were fourteen-pound balls further down the wall. I discovered these plyometric boxes — heavy, sturdy boxes that you can do high step exercises on that felt like they weighed fifty pounds — and we had to push them all the way across the length of the gym floor and back. We did frog jumps. Plank walks. Mountain climbers. You know it’s bad when my favorite station is just doing freaking jumping jacks! Jess and I started in different parts of the chainsaw and didn’t get to talk during these exercises. She looked good at it though. Actually, I probably looked pretty good at most of it too, from the outside, but on the inside, I felt like I was going to die. I had to remind myself to keep breathing. And then the instructor would yell “switch” and we’d go to the weights side. Now I was used to using five-pound weights most of the time, but I think the lowest ones I saw anywhere were fifteen-pounders. The women who take these classes are badasses. I’d like to see someone try to steal a purse from one of these women, they would seriously get their ass kicked. I used the fifteen-pound weights for the first exercise and then went to the closet to get something lighter. But there were still so many weight-lifting exercises I had never done before, and these were heavy weights, but it was still a nice break from the chainsaw.

The highlight of the class was about three-quarters of the way through when I was plank walking across the gym, my writer’s wrists killing me, and my instructor said, “Carrie,” and I looked up, and she gave me a little nod. She noticed! Not only was I here, but I was giving it my all and I wasn’t wussing out! I knew the instructor would rather see me do each step well rather than keep up the pace of the others and be sloppy or cheat, so I did it all carefully. Having her notice my effort/resilience was my proudest moment during this whole challenge.

The class, like pretty much all of them at the gym, went on for an hour. I was covered in sweat and already was getting a headache before I left the gym. I profusely thanked Jess for doing it with me, then headed to preschool to pick up Knox.

 

My message with Josh post-Tabata class

By evening, I was already starting to cramp up. Not wanting to see the full extent of what the pain would be, I took some ibuprofen and used my heating pad that evening. By bedtime, it was hard to both lay down and get up out of bed. I was soooo glad I knew I didn’t have to exercise the next day. And when the next day came, I was in even worse pain. Ibuprofen did nothing. I walked around in a weird, little shuffle. Going up and down steps was super hard due to a terrible pain in my quads. Getting out of my SUV was hard — I can’t imagine what it would have felt like to still be using the low, little Civic.

When Josh got home that night, he diagnosed my problem as built- up lactic acid, and agreed to help massage my legs to get it out. That was the most painful massage of my life. Massage really isn’t even the right word. Even having the kids brush up against my legs in the kitchen had led to me releasing little yelps; having Josh push on my muscles and bend my legs up and down, I had tears running down my face, and would have been sobbing, if not for the fear of waking my kids up. But at least now I knew why I had been in so much pain. After all, if I was in such bad shape, I wouldn’t have been able to make it through the whole class. That night I bought some Simply Lemonade and started filling the last twenty percent of my water bottle with the stuff to keep me drinking water non-stop throughout the day. I gave up coffee, soda, and alcohol to make sure water was my priority and that I wouldn’t get into a lactic acid build-up situation again.

On Day 8, though I could still feel the sting of Tabata, I went to the gym to do Jacob’s ladder because it was on the schedule and I needed to get that square. Josh had talked reverently about the Jacob’s ladder machine before, and warned me it might take some practice and working my way up to five minutes, but I just wanted to get it done and crossed off and suffer the consequences the next day if I had to. The Jacob’s ladder is a sort of treadmill ladder, set at a forty-degree angle. You hook a belt to you and turn the machine on, and once the belt line feels your weight/tension, the ladder starts moving so that you constantly have to climb up as the steps fall away beneath you. Josh kept talking to me for encouragement/distraction. It was tough! Mostly because it’s easy to go fast because your weight is pulling it down. I had to learn to take slower steps so I wouldn’t have to do as many of them. Halfway through I took a thirty-second break, but otherwise, I got my five minutes done without incident. Josh was super proud of me for doing it even though I was still in so much pain from Tabata, and I was just glad to have earned my 6^th square. (If you’re counting along, it was the 6^th because there were three squares for bringing a guest, and I had earned one of those by bringing Jess to Tabata.)

On Day 9, I earned squares #7 and #8 by taking Butts and Guts with Jess again. I ended up taking this class weekly throughout the challenge, and this first time was the hardest — and not just because I wasn’t used to it. The format of this class on the first day was that we had eight or ten stations of different exercises that target your leg and butt muscles, and between each station we stopped and did sit-ups/crunches or planks and plank-based exercises. It was a tough class, especially on my core, which I never focused on before. Thankfully the pace was slower than Tabata and the instructor a little less intimidating.

Day 10’s yoga was awesome. I was nervous about signing up for a seventy-five-minute session, but Josh had done classes with the instructor and told me that the pace was very relaxing, that the instructor really focused on the meditation angle, and that I would do fine. So I went, and awkwardly was the last person there and then everyone else had to scoot their mats over to make room for me, but otherwise I found it super calming — even better than getting a pedicure. Considering these classes at my gym are FREE, I think this is going to be my new treat to myself.

I’m guessing you don’t want to hear a play by play of how I experienced and earned all twenty-five squares, because after those first ten days I really had adapted and was used to it. That’s not to say that the rest of the classes didn't kick my butt (Triple Threat and Rock Solid Core had me looking around the room in disbelief that other people did this just for fun and not for a contest), but with each class I would feel totally fatigued, and then the next day I would have that feeling that I knew I had done something strenuous the day before, but the specifics of it weren’t so fresh.

Jess did like six classes with me, and my friend Erin did almost as many, even with her family suffering illness after illness during that month. My final tally was that I ended up doing nine circuit/bootcamp classes, four Zumba/dance classes, three barre classes, two yoga classes, three days of cardio, the Jacob’s ladder challenge and I used the three squares for bringing a guest. My five empty squares that I did not do were two cycle classes, kickboxing (a class that I would have done if it wasn’t five o’clock on a Tuesday), a third Sunday class, and one more class with my Tabata/barre instructor. I did plan to take my final class with Gabby to bring it full circle, but on my last Monday when I was going to take Tabata I had a terrible head cold, and then I was going to finish with her barre class on the next day but she had to call out sick for a family member, so I had to go with something else. I finished the challenge in twenty-eight days, which was possible thanks to my friends coming with me, my decision to take two classes in the same day twice, and my dear husband taking over many of my normal responsibilities during those four weeks.

Commemorating earning my 25th square

So, did I win a prize? You betcha! One month’s worth of free gym membership, which I don’t even know the exact value for, but I think it’s like $50. It’s not a glamorous prize, but what was even more valuable was the confidence I gained through this challenge. I never thought I could be one of those moms up in the big gymnasium, doing seventy-five burpees and seventy-five military presses and seventy-five chin-ups and seventy-five chest presses…and I still am not. But I can do fifty, which is way more than I could do before the challenge. And maybe when I’ve done fifty of everything, I make it back to doing the last twenty-five. Except for the chin-ups. My top number of those was eleven, and that’s with using my foot to help climb up the wall a little. You do what you gotta do.

People keep asking me if I’m going to keep doing the classes, and I think I will! Why waste my time on the treadmill, watching the clock, just to keep my body’s status quo, when I can go to two or three classes per week, really “feel it” and continue to sculpt my body? Within the first two weeks I actually put on three pounds of muscle, and now I’ve probably lost three pounds of fat. The number on the scale hasn’t changed much, but my body dynamics have. Josh and I just went to Butts and Guts together Thursday, where the instructor had a belated Valentine’s Day “partner workout,” and we did activities together, like sit-ups facing each other and passing a sixteen-pound medicine ball back and forth on each one. It was actually kind of fun. And I do plan to go back to Tabata just to prove that I can do it.

The gym prize was not the hour-long massage I was hoping for, but I treated myself to that this morning because I earned it! I also took Jess out to lunch to thank her for being my newbie buddy, and Erin and I are still scheduling our victory lunch. Wherever we go, I’m getting the fries with that.