I wasn't overly blessed with coordination, or depth perception, or balance, or grace, or poise, or...you get the picture. I was never passionate (or particularly good at) dance or gymnastics and I was terrible at all sports involving throwing, catching, or hitting. In gym class I mostly just got hit in the face with any sports ball that happened to be in the air at some point.
Recently I have started working out at the local gym where I work, nothing serious, just to be in better shape overall. Whatever. Anyway, I started there thinking I would only run on the treadmill...but then some of the classes offered started to look interesting.
I tried my hand at pilates, which I really like and it's super relaxing and whatnot. Then last week I just wasn't feeling the treadmill or elliptical, but I was in time for a Piloxing class. What is piloxing, you might ask? Apparently it's a mix of pilates, dance, and boxing. The internet says it looks like this.
Needless to say I was intimidated by the coordination skills needed. But then, something surprising happened. I didn't totally suck. I kept up with the group despite it being my first time and I had no idea what the eff I was doing, AND the instructor told me after that she had a hard time believing that it was my first piloxing class. What the what? Hold up. I was kinda good at something athletic-y? The girl whose hometown librarians STILL know her name despite not living in that town for the past 8 years? The girl who has been hit by footballs, volleyballs, softballs (their name lies!), basketballs, tennis balls, and soccer balls? (I'll admit that during the one leg balance part, I totally sucked and had to use both feet, but the rest was actually kind of fun. And HARD, this was a Workout with a capital W.)
I can only attribute my supposed success to a blending of my past randomly acquired skills. I'm not talking about using algebra in everyday life, like we were lied to told. I mean skills that I NEVER thought would be used except for the odd things they were designed for.
The first, is pilates. Just knowing some forms and placements of your arms/legs/spine were helpful. (not much, but a little)
The second, is my obsession interest in the show Dance Moms so that I learned some dance terms and stuff. (yeah, we'll go with that)
Third can be attributed to the dance themed flash mobs that I took part in. (Mostly Thriller, and yes, I do know the entire six minute dance) We had just a couple weeks to learn the dance, sometimes just a couple hours.
I'm the Zombie dressed as Where's Waldo. Did you find me?
And finally, I give my success to something that I thought I had blocked from my memory. High School Gym Class. *shudder* I went to school in Minnesota, in a very small school (think 4000 people in the entire TOWN, so my graduating class was 97 kids) During the winter we had enough snow to not even know where exactly the track or football field was, so here was the school with 4 grades of gym classes (broken up into about 25 kids per class for each grade, so 16 gym classes) with 7 periods in the day all needing time and space for gym.
Some time was bought with health class (my grade defaced the books by adding penises to anything and everything, 10 books had to be permanently "retired" after my grade went through) The other option was to do weightlifting in the weight room (the old library) and the final option was Tae Bo. In the wrestling room.
Now, if you've never experienced the joy of a high school wrestling room, be thankful. Ours was about 20 feet by 15 feet, walls and floor covered in mats that teenage boys sweated all over as they practiced wrestling. Gross. Gross gross gross!
Ours was red and black, the perfect colors for hiding EVERYTHING. (gross)
The gym teacher would herd us all into there, we'd try not to touch anything (including the floor) and the teacher would put in a Billy Blanks Teaches Tae Bo VHS into the VCR. Then for the next 40 minutes we would follow along to the amount of minimal effort that would get us a decent grade best of our abilities.
If you haven't had the pleasure of seeing these videos, look them up, it's worth it to understand some of my horror.
So oddly enough, these random skills have turned into some innate ability to not totally suck at Piloxing. So, if you ever need anyone to fill in at a piloxing class who looks like they sort of know what they're doing...I guess I'm the one to call.
Thanks Michael Jackson, Billy Blanks, and Abby Lee Miller. You have given me completely useless but somehow helpful skills.
No comments:
Post a Comment