Day 32 on which I try new things

One of the things I’ve heard over and over about exercise is “find something you like, that way you’ll stick to it”.

That’s probably good advice.

Unfortunately, it’s not advice I’ve ever been able to take.

I’ve never been much of an athlete. Other than a very short career as a gymnast (ironically ending when I grew to be 5’9” in 6^th grade), I never really enjoyed any of the competitive sports. I never got into jazzercise, aerobics, Zumba, or any of the other “made to be fun” classes.

Honestly, I’d rather sit than move and like a day with a good book better than a day of good exercise. They only thing I’ve found that involves movement that I also really like is yoga, which one of my partners is quick to point out, isn’t “really” exercise, since it involves neither an accelerated heart rate nor building muscle. Unless you do it like this. Which I don’t.

But, given that #100DaysofHealth kind of requires day after day after day of working out, I thought it might be a good time to give some new things a try. And since I belong to a gym, I have the option of attending literally 100 classes a week, and I’ve been slowly working my way through some new ones, including:

Bootcamp—an hour-long class that combines strength with aerobic activities. It’s a sort of rotating functional fitness class that’s become my go-to 3 times a week. Do I love it? No, but I love that I can get weights and running in in one class. At the end, I know I’ve been worked out—and that I can stop worrying about it for another 24 hours.

Spin class—I was told by a trainer a few years back that “spinning” (an instructor-led series of moves on a stationary bike that involve increasing and decreasing the drag on the bike, then standing, sitting, pedaling faster, pedaling slower etc to really loud music) was the very best exercise for weight loss. But I hated it. HATED it. Boring, loud, and painful.

Barre class—never having seen one, I thought this would be a lot of stretching and ballet-like movements, something pretty for the housewife who wanted to feel worked out at the end. WRONG. It’s mostly strength-building (omg, who knew 3 pound weights could get impossibly heavy to lift so quickly?)  and it’s a challenge. It wasn’t love at first plie, but I’d do it again.

Pilates—I always loved the idea of Pilates. I’d see the ladies sitting on the machines pulling themselves back and forth with the pullies, and thing, “Now, see, THAT looks easy and fun”. When the gym offered a free 1 hour personal class, I jumped on it. It took about 20 minutes to get that those machines are torture devices that find and work muscles you’ve never used in your entire life. I was shocked that after 3 weeks of bootcamp and a noticeable improvement in my strength, I literally couldn’t do some of the simple core exercises that Pilates is known for. So I signed up for a $150 package of classes to torture me some more.

Hot yoga—yep. Awesome. Buckets of sweat, yes, but also…awesome. More for flexibility than for “exercise”, but awesome.

Actually, the favorite thing I’ve done so far is to rediscover the pleasure of riding my bike. It’s something that I did as a kid, of course, because that’s how kids got around the neighborhood when I was young. It was also something I did in high school, because one of my boyfriends was a serious biker, as in 20 mile rides every day, and my honeymoon was actually a bike tour of northern France. But I’d honestly forgotten how much more you see, and hear, and smell on a bike than in a car, and about the terror/joy of flying downhill at 30 miles an hour knowing that an opened car door or a blowout means serious road rash at best and possible death at worst.

So yeah, I guess I have found something I really enjoy—and also a couple of things that are fun because they’re challenges, instead of being fun because they’re fun.

Did I mention that I’ve never been much of an athlete, and that I truly don’t like exercise? If there’s hope for me, there’s hope for anyone. As in the rest of life, the secret seems to be perseverance, and continuing to throw stuff at the wall until something sticks.