Pump'd

I love the game of volleyball, even though I'm not very good at it. I'm a decent recreational-level player on court and sand, because I can serve and I can bump and I'll dive for errant balls. But I can't set nor spike and I'm too short. Christensen glares me down almost every game because I'm always running out of formation. In high school, I played on the starting team for intramural sports from women's rugby and soccer to tennis and netball (I couldn't play softball, only coach, since I was on the school team). When I showed up for volleyball, my good friend and school team captain Jiemo benched me. One of life's hardest lessons is that you can't be good at every single sport.

Monday morning, I got up at 8am, two hours later than my usual 6am wake-up call. I was tired, so I slept in and missed my Monday morning run. I got lazy throughout the day, and by the time evening rolled around, I figured I'd head over to the gym for some relaxing weights work. Tired of hanging around the weights room rats, I decided to take a class, and this one, I thought I could try:

Body Pump
Emphasis: Cardio endurance, strength
Level: All levels

Take your weight workout up a notch with this co-ed muscle-endurance class. Special barbells are used with weight choices ranging from 3 to 100 lbs. Each song focuses on a specific muscle group giving you a full body strength workout in 60 minutes. Suitable for the first-time weight lifter and a challenge for the experienced. Body Pump® founders claim it to be the fastest way in the universe to get fit.

Why not?

I walked into class, held in the large gym that housed two indoor basketball courts -- so, pretty big. And pretty full. And pretty full of Trixies in workout outfits, standing by steps with barbells and weights. I slipped into the back, took a set of what everyone had and then one of the two teachers asked, "Does anyone watch 'Dancing With The Stars'?"

That's when I should have left.

But I'm a su-pa-pah trou-pa-pah, so I stayed. It was hard stuff, maneuvring barbells with different weights for different exercises, from lunges to triceps lifts and things you do to your glutes to look great at Le Passage, I'm sure. Everyone around me rocked the house -- they dug the Right Said Fred and Black-Eyed Peas soundtrack. Diagonally in front of me was a girl who came to boxing class occasionally, wielding the weights like Mario Batali and a slab of pizza dough. How was a girl significantly slighter than me in physique slinging 50 pounds effortlessly when she couldn't hurt a fly with boxing gloves on?

I made it through the rest of the class and perky "oohs!" from the teachers, didn't TKO. I don't like being the worst at anything, particularly something related to physical activity, so I tried to at least stay in good form, even if that meant using lighter weights on the barbells. I fully recovered from the experience this morning at boxing, when I executed a sweet-feeling hook-hook-hook-cross-pivot-jab-cross-(speed!)-jab-cross combo.