I still work out
The swimsuit season is blessedly behind us, and I can resume hibernating in my jeans-n-tshirt uniform in peace. This summer I managed to dawn the dreaded suit about one and a half times, and it was one too many for me, if I’m honest.
We’re now entering our second Covid fall and gyms are sprouting up again. Except now I’m too squeamish to even consider communal dumbbells and can’t believe I once comfortably breathed the same stale air as a group of sweating strangers.
Back when it all started in the spring of 2020 and the little workout studio I frequented “temporarily closed,” we all assumed it would be very temporary indeed. And, truthfully, I welcomed a break. The “push it” shtick got a bit old, the post-workout high not as intoxicating, the next-day soreness not as satisfying. Suddenly I had a completely legitimate reason to stay pinned to my couch (read “laptop”), exerting only the tiny muscles in my fingers.
It was a confusing time — routines halted, habits put on pause — and I was happy to answer the studio’s pleas to continue paying my monthly dues and keep them afloat through these unprecedented circumstances. And just as I began to question my commitment to this particular philanthropic endeavor, they ran out of steam and called it a wrap, along with that year’s swimsuit season.
I languished through that fall, sporadically dropping to the floor for a set of crunches, then immediately checking in the mirror for early signs of a six-pack. But, Mirror and I have, what you might call, a one-sided relationship — it tells me like it is, and I keep waiting for it to change. So as 2021 began, along with another wave of cases, I was really starting to worry about Covid-19 — not only the virus, but also the pounds gained by an average person due to our collective immobility.
Certainly my daily walk around the neighborhood was counting for something, but I really felt, in my gut, that I must be moving way more than what my phone’s pedometer was reporting. Naturally, I purchased a fitness tracker to verify my hypothesis. I figured that all those trips to the pantry for a snack (and back!) should be counting for something too.
As it were, I was racking up about one thousand steps around our fourteen hundred square feet every day. Still, the fitness tracker wasn’t impressed. Apparently getting my heart rate up was the key to closing its non-metaphorical rings. Interestingly, it turned out that pulling weeds in the garden or sharpening a few kitchen knives did wonders for my daily goals. If only there was a more consistent way to get my ticker pumping, right?
Naturally, Instagram was retrieving my thoughts in real time and started feeding me fitness ads that very same day. One of them showed slender women moving gracefully through various exercises, promising tone and flexibility. It really looked like stuff I could do!
I found these lean ladies under the “Dance Flow” category of the app and took it as a good sign, given my years of recreational dance experience and presumed ability to “flow”. It turns out that flow involves a lot of Downward Dog, a position in which I regrettably observed my derriere in the cold-hearted Mirror. Needless to say, the mirror was swiftly banished to the garage.
The next day everything hurt, and in all the wrong places too. My wrists (thanks Downward Dog!), my neck, my lower back were none too obliging of my fitness goals. Ignoring the pains, I persevered and pressed play on the next video, which featured a truly stunning woman with chocolate skin encased in a white unitard. Relinquishing myself to the experience, I followed her instructions. Feet in a wide stance. Connect your hands behind you. Hinge at the hips. Breeeathe. Move your arms up over your head — this is where I lost her, because I really can’t bend my shoulder that way — and touch the floor! I sat on the edge of my bed, in shock and awe, as she stayed comfortably contorted in that preposterous position for a good minute. The voiceover instructed me to breeeathe. I did.
I ditched the app soon after that and eventually the fitness tracker with it. For a while I was working out on my own consistently enough that every song I overheard was judged by its suitability for squats or deadlifts. But then one morning I had an early meeting, or maybe I was making waffles, or maybe I was a bit hungover, but eventually, and possibly inevitably, I lost the habit I worked so persistently to create. I did try to revive said habit by retrieving my little fitness tracker from the night stand, whereupon it’s been charging for the past two weeks.
Still, some days I roll out of bed and plunge into a plank, my no-pack furiously fighting the magnetic pull of the carpet beneath me. Once I find myself there, I power through a potpourri of lifts and twists, maybe even some push-ups if I’m feeling spicy. But the most consistent form of exercise through this pandemic remains my walk around the neighborhood. At least it gives my eyes a rest from the blue glow of the computer screen and my legs a much needed stretch, lest I become a tin woman.
And with that, I better head out before it gets too dark out there tonight.
