Taking the Gloves Off
Two weeks ago you would have found me doing something I've never done before. I participated in an exercise class- a workout at a local boxing club. It probably seems a little strange that at nearly 40, this is something I have managed to avoid thus far. After all, I am in decent shape and I workout religiously five days a week. Why have I chosen to neatly sidestep this experience up until now?
Photo courtesy of Christine McDonough from Copper Shamrock
Initially, I assumed my aversion had its roots in the same repulsion I feel for eating in public. It's not like I don't enjoy raising a glass or having a nibble with family and friends now and then, but consuming food seems like a physical activity best enjoyed in private. After all, it's messy and doesn't pair well with conversation and other social behaviors.
Exercise seems much the same to me. It involves copious amounts of bodily fluids and very little breathe left over for exchanging pleasantries.
Just doesn't seem well suited to a group setting.
I know other people feel differently about this than I do. I am certain plenty of my friends embrace exercise classes, gyms, and group activities because they encourage competition and hold them accountable. I've never needed that. I am extremely self-competitive, ambitious, and driven. I like to flatter myself that I do my best work independently. But I began to wonder if I was missing out on something, if I was avoiding this experience because I simply didn't like to appear vulnerable. Maybe it would be healthy for me to venture into the world and exercise. Cathartic. Perhaps I would discover what it was that irked me about it.
Photo courtesy of Christine McDonough from Copper Shamrock
Boxing was a great fit for me as a beginner. After all, I've been allowing Billy Blanks to yell at me for the better part of two decades. I can cross, jab, and uppercut with the best of them. So in the company of a cheerful, encouraging friend, I let them wrap my hands and donned some gloves. I ran, punched, squatted, jumped, and kicked for an hour, weaving between punching bags and straining to hear instructions over the booming bass.
At one point, exhausted and shaking, I even contemplated puking all over the floor mats. And here's what I discovered.
My aversion to exercise class has more to do with my natural resistance to authority than anything else. I don't love sweating in public and I don't cherish the vulnerability of failing at something in the company of strangers. But by far, the hardest part was for me to follow instructions without shouting back a sarcastic quip, to run or jump in a pack without acknowledging the evolutionary absurdity of the behavior. My rationality and intense focus on the abstract preoccupies nearly every moment of my thought. I am unable to hide my embarrassment not necessarily for myself but for all of the people in that class. Grown adults, following instructions and straining to obey the commands of a figure whose only authority is the kind we give her. Competing with one another to finish that set of push-ups first, to throw that punch hardest, to win her approval.
An absurd circus of pack mentality that would seem so strange in another time, another place.
I just can't bring myself to normalize it enough to enjoy it on any level.
Photo courtesy of Christine McDonough from Copper Shamrock
So I bought a regimen of two weeks of classes and I'm going back for more. Not because I think participating in an awkward farce has any inherent value for me in terms of emotional growth. It doesn't. I'm going back because after two years of challenging and exercising myself, I have never been as sore as I was that weekend. And for three or four days afterwards. And who am I to argue with results like that.
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