Kicking the habit
Since finishing cooking school and eliminating the daily helpings of foie gras and brioche from my diet, I have gained six pounds. It’s not a huge amount, but my weight has been extraordinarily consistent since seventh grade, and it disturbs me when my clothes are not quite as comfortable as they used to be. An office job has something to do with it, not to mention a joyful reunion with my car and the return to supersized portions in the U.S.
Luckily, my coworker SueAnn is a triathlete and a very energetic, cool person. About four months ago, she suggested that we check out a cardio kickboxing class at the employee gym, and refused to let me weasel out of going. As someone who had barely broken a sweat since I quit the freshman soccer team, I was a little reticent. (Incidentally, in the time that has elapsed since that first gratifying soccer team quit, I have also started and quit club soccer, indoor soccer, adult soccer, tennis lessons, pilates, golf, swing dancing, women’s snowboard camp, belly dancing, Japanese, Italian, French, Javascript and Flash classes, two health clubs, four cities, seven apartments, and too many jobs to count. Quitting is also the title of my favorite This American Life episode.) But somehow SueAnn has kept me going to cardio kickboxing with moderate regularity, and I've even started to enjoy myself. Sort of.
I didn’t even know what cardio kickboxing was. I had a vague notion that punching bags might be involved. In retrospect, I’m glad I was such a fitness innocent, because the reality is honestly far worse than the nightmare scenarios even my own fertile imagination could have produced. I get upset when my life starts to resemble Dilbert or Cathy cartoons, and attending aerobics classes at a corporate gym definitely engages me in both of those realms.
The instructor is deeply tan, deeply muscular, pierced, and as far as I can tell enjoys limitless energy stores. She also has a great butt; probably a crucial asset in her line of work. Every day, she rushes in one minute before the class is set to begin, pops a CD into a sadistic music machine that allows her to crank up the tempo to “muscle-shred” setting, adjusts her headset, and gets us jogging before she’s even stripped off her street clothes.
The routines are complicated, and the first couple of classes I thought I might die of either exhaustion or embarrassment, whichever came first. Now I’ve gotten used to the whole process:
1) Change into clothes that make me look mentally compromised (lime green elastic waist shorts, 1992 INXS shirt, rainbow socks, sparkly white sneakers, purple headband).
2) Hide in back row of class.
3) Rush around punching the air in hot, mirrored room to songs like “Don’t Cha Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me?” and “Don’t Phunk with My Heart” with fellow technology drones.
4) Try not to throw up.
5) Clap occasionally in between punches; kick the air; ponder whether I look more like circus seal or uncoordinated donkey (or both?).
6) Attempt to shut down brain.
7) Respond too late when teacher bellows, “GIMME JACKS! JACKS! TWO MORE TWO MORE!!” Suddenly I am the only one jacking.
8) Slink out of class fifteen minutes early to avoid crunches and lunges.
We stomp and fake and hook in unison, like a dance squad or the North Korean army. Occasionally when we’ve completed a particularly challenging set of exercises together, people will actually whoop and cheer. Sometimes the sweat and the cheering reminds me of clubbing in London a long time ago, but then I remember that I am at work in a tech corridor south of San Francisco. I did not just eat a giant vindaloo and drink martinis in preparation for dancing all night long, there are no cute boys named Duncan to flirt with, nobody in the room is on drugs (as far as I know), and we are not dancing to hip European DJs but instead to a cover of “Sweet Child O’ Mine” sung by a plaintive woman and sped up to the point of absurdity by that sadistic machine that crouches near the stack of Bosu balls.
Sometimes when I punch the air, I pretend I am punching Herman Miller in the chops. I know I should thank him for inventing the cubicle because without it we might still have long vast open rows of desks, but I prefer to blame him for this entire mess instead.
Luckily, my coworker SueAnn is a triathlete and a very energetic, cool person. About four months ago, she suggested that we check out a cardio kickboxing class at the employee gym, and refused to let me weasel out of going. As someone who had barely broken a sweat since I quit the freshman soccer team, I was a little reticent. (Incidentally, in the time that has elapsed since that first gratifying soccer team quit, I have also started and quit club soccer, indoor soccer, adult soccer, tennis lessons, pilates, golf, swing dancing, women’s snowboard camp, belly dancing, Japanese, Italian, French, Javascript and Flash classes, two health clubs, four cities, seven apartments, and too many jobs to count. Quitting is also the title of my favorite This American Life episode.) But somehow SueAnn has kept me going to cardio kickboxing with moderate regularity, and I've even started to enjoy myself. Sort of.
I didn’t even know what cardio kickboxing was. I had a vague notion that punching bags might be involved. In retrospect, I’m glad I was such a fitness innocent, because the reality is honestly far worse than the nightmare scenarios even my own fertile imagination could have produced. I get upset when my life starts to resemble Dilbert or Cathy cartoons, and attending aerobics classes at a corporate gym definitely engages me in both of those realms.
The instructor is deeply tan, deeply muscular, pierced, and as far as I can tell enjoys limitless energy stores. She also has a great butt; probably a crucial asset in her line of work. Every day, she rushes in one minute before the class is set to begin, pops a CD into a sadistic music machine that allows her to crank up the tempo to “muscle-shred” setting, adjusts her headset, and gets us jogging before she’s even stripped off her street clothes.
The routines are complicated, and the first couple of classes I thought I might die of either exhaustion or embarrassment, whichever came first. Now I’ve gotten used to the whole process:
1) Change into clothes that make me look mentally compromised (lime green elastic waist shorts, 1992 INXS shirt, rainbow socks, sparkly white sneakers, purple headband).
2) Hide in back row of class.
3) Rush around punching the air in hot, mirrored room to songs like “Don’t Cha Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me?” and “Don’t Phunk with My Heart” with fellow technology drones.
4) Try not to throw up.
5) Clap occasionally in between punches; kick the air; ponder whether I look more like circus seal or uncoordinated donkey (or both?).
6) Attempt to shut down brain.
7) Respond too late when teacher bellows, “GIMME JACKS! JACKS! TWO MORE TWO MORE!!” Suddenly I am the only one jacking.
8) Slink out of class fifteen minutes early to avoid crunches and lunges.
We stomp and fake and hook in unison, like a dance squad or the North Korean army. Occasionally when we’ve completed a particularly challenging set of exercises together, people will actually whoop and cheer. Sometimes the sweat and the cheering reminds me of clubbing in London a long time ago, but then I remember that I am at work in a tech corridor south of San Francisco. I did not just eat a giant vindaloo and drink martinis in preparation for dancing all night long, there are no cute boys named Duncan to flirt with, nobody in the room is on drugs (as far as I know), and we are not dancing to hip European DJs but instead to a cover of “Sweet Child O’ Mine” sung by a plaintive woman and sped up to the point of absurdity by that sadistic machine that crouches near the stack of Bosu balls.
Sometimes when I punch the air, I pretend I am punching Herman Miller in the chops. I know I should thank him for inventing the cubicle because without it we might still have long vast open rows of desks, but I prefer to blame him for this entire mess instead.
posted by cindym at 4:42 PM
6 Comments:
cindy - even when its not food its awesome. very very awesome. and wicked funny.
You are too funny. I can totally picture you in your inxs shirt and all your funky colours, the only one left jacking. Is it wrong that you kind of made me visualize Richard Simmons? I know you are much cuter though ;)
ha, thanks moxie!
meesh - i am totally grosser even than richard simmons. i forgot to mention my face turns the color of a tomato for the rest of the day also.
Cario-kickboxing?
What...No YouTube video?
I so respect your taste that I have gone straight to thisamericanlife.org and am currently listening to Quitting, and all I can say is this better get really good really fast. If Ira Glass falsely cracks himself up one more time with a drawn-out thought like "what if my muse, like, calls me to sculpt butter?" I could die.
Why doesn't he just let this obviously more interesting person who created Quitting Quarterly talk?
oh MAN... i feel guilty. we must start up again in january! now YOU are the one keeping up the ol' workout routine while i pack on the holiday pounds. :)
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