Don't be a hater.....

Today is another scorcher and the love bugs are still out in force.  The elliptical trainer is still smirking at me and the pool is looking better and better.  Unfortunately, I have errands after work and must accomplish my daily fitness goal on my lunch break, so I have 45 minutes, tops.  What to do, what to do?  I still want to mix up my exercise routine as much for the benefits of muscle confusion as for the benefit of not getting bored with whole cotton pickin’ idea of exercise and diving head first into a bag of Fritos.  I could go to the pool, but at this time of day the likelihood of being able swim laps without bowling over small children is slim to none.  Then I remember something I have seen on my cable TV guide but have never actually explored (mostly out of fear, I assure you).  Thanks to Comcast, I have free access to on demand exercise and fitness programs.   Working from home means that I no longer have an excuse not to partake of this cornucopia of free workouts.  So, dear readers, with great trepidation, I turned on the TV and started perusing the options available to me.

 

A plethora of virtual aerobics instructors, not unlike the me of twenty years ago, were all beckoning me to go ahead and get fit with them!  Gawd!  Was I ever that perky and annoying?  Why didn’t someone take me out back then - someone with a high powered rifle equipped with a laser scope, perched high above the YMCA, taking a bead on me as I walked out the door?  Because I am pretty sure that some of my students must been just as annoyed with me back then as I was with one of today's TV aerobics instructors, folks.   I did one and a half classes on my lunch break and wanted to kill the second aerobics instructor with my bare hands before I was done. 

The first half hour class was fine.  It was a fast paced, low impact class.  For those of you that don’t know me that well, I am only allowed to perform low impact workouts due to not one, but two back surgeries that left my spine fused in three places and enough metal in my back build a small rocket missile (which I would gladly have used on instructor number two today).  High impact exercise is strictly forbidden my my orthopedic surgeon.  Also by my knees, which have very little cartilage left in them after ten years of teaching step aerobics.  Ironic, isn’t it?  But I digress. 

Instructor number one took me though a good workout that got my heart pumping and the sweat flowing.  I could have repeated half of that class, but didn’t know if I could fast forward though the warm up part, since I was already plenty warmed up.   So I picked a cardio sculpting class for selection number two.  I was only going to be able to do fifteen minutes before my lunch break was up, so I figured I could handle fifteen minutes of almost anything.  Boy was I mistaken!  Within five minutes my thighs were burning, my knees were wailing in pain and this little chica was doing plyometrics, for cryin’ out loud!  Plyometrics = high impact.  Oh, she demonstrated the low impact moves, with a very condescending tone and a smirk on her face that was reminiscent of the smirk my elliptical trainer gives me.  I really didn't like her attitude, or her ripped abs.  She could bounce all day long without her knees grinding in bone-on-bone agony or feeling her jiggly parts going airborne.  She didn’t have any jiggly parts, the perky little witch.   Just as I was telling her in no uncertain terms just exactly where she could stick those dumbbells, it struck me.  That really was me twenty years ago!  Too fit and too perky.  It’s truly a wonder that I am still alive and had not been mowed down in the YMCA parking lot.  To all of my former students, I offer my most profound apologies.