Yet Another New Class: Step and Sculpt

Today's form of exercise torture was supposed to be Step and Sculpt, but it turned out that the instructor is on vacation in Hawaii (must be nice!), so there was a fill-in instructor...the woman who taught the class I went to (and neglected to write about) on Friday - Circuit Training. She's a very perky lady, the typical kind of instructor you find on an exercise video, full of overly enthusiastic encouragement...like "Only four more! You can do anything four more times!" Don't get me wrong, I mostly like her as an instructor, her classes have been the most challenging and most burn-full for me so far. Today's class was no different.

There were weights. There were jumping jacks - lots of them. The pathetic thing about the jumping jacks was that I couldn't keep up. My feet just started to burn. Maybe I need different shoes for aerobic workouts, I don't know. There were crunches. There wasn't a muscle that wasn't burning by the end of the class, that's for sure.

The most obnoxious thing about class was the person exercising next to me, who was about seventy times more enthusiastic than the instructor. She kept shouting out "yeah!" and "uh" and counting down how many reps we had left of each exercise. At first, it was kind of cute, but as things continued to get harder, it just got to be really frustrating.

Then, just for fun, we stayed for the 30 minute class that followed, called Butts and Gluts. Or...for today, it was pilates.

I've never done pilates. I might never again. At least, not until I'm in seriously better shape. I'd heard from many people that it was like yoga, just more intense, and let me just say that it's way more intense. My muscles were often quaking from the length of time we would hold or pulse in certain poses, and there were lots of things I just plain couldn't do. It was almost depressing how much flexibility I've lost over the years as I've gotten older and heavier. I used to be a gymnast, a pretty darn good one, and I could, for instance, do a straddle and lay my stomach on the floor no problem. Today, I could barely even get my elbows to the floor. I'm sure it will get better with time, especially now that I'm exercising regularly. At least, I hope it will.

So, tomorrow we're trying another step class, so we'll see how that turns out. After all of our work with the box, I'm pretty sure that I can keep up in a step class. Stay tuned to hear all about it!