Getting to love my office gym

Group Fitness Room
Originally uploaded by Belmont University

I initially felt that the office gym was dreary; no music playing, TVs showing the History channel's show on military weapons of the Civil War, and just a bunch of guys there working out on the free weights. I adore aerobics classes, and they have them, but they are at 6:30 a.m. or 5:30 p.m. and I initially thought that was not doable because of my schedule with the kids. After consulting with Monkeyrotica, we decided that it was possible to make the 6:30 a.m. class work. I just have to set the kids' clothing out the night before and feed the bird before I sneak stealthily out of the house at 5:45 to get to the gym on time.

Last week, I went to the morning step-aerobics class for the third time since October, when I was relocated to this building. I was being a little down on the class/instructor the first few times because she doesn't play the pumping, dance-club-style music I enjoy working out to. Also, her teaching style is low- to medium-impact and I like high. Giving her some credit though, all of the four other women in the class were either injured or very new to step, so low-impact was appropriate. But BORING for me.

Instead of just resigning myself to being bored, I went ahead and just did some alternate high-impact moves and had a blast!! At the end of class, I asked her if that was okay (I have known instructors to get p.o.'d if you don't follow them) and she said, sure! She was a little inexperienced and hadn't been trained for high-impact, so if I or anyone else wanted to do high, she'd just point them over to ME to demonstrate. On top of that, in the locker room, a few of the other ladies in the class asked me (hopefully?) if I was planning to be a regular! That was very flattering.

I went back to the step aerobics class yesterday and there were about twice as many people in it. About halfway through, the instructor stopped and told everyone that her knee was bothering her and she'd be doing the low-impact versions of the moves, but if you wanted to try high-impact to LOOK AT NYLONTHREAD! Um, no warning (even though she did say she might do that last week, I wasn't really mentally prepared for it)! And, while I love the high-impact, I'm a follower in those classes, not a leader (especially that early in the day). Maybe next time if I plan for it I can handle keeping it together, but I think I put a wrench in her routine a few times because I went the wrong direction while on my own.

Seriously, it's my fourth aerobics class in two years or more. I'm going to cut myself some slack for not being perfect. Dang, it was fun, though!!