Pilates

My dad used to compete in local power lifting competitions, mostly while I was elementary school age. Most of what I know about weightlifting, or at least most of my foundation, has come from or been influenced by him. But just how deeply those ideas were ingrained in me have only recently become evident.
Over the years, I've always looked at certain exercises that don't utilize resistance training, specifically weights, as sub-par or a waste of time when it came to building strength. And the desire to build strength is intertwined with any idea or thought I ever have about fitness, without me even thinking about it. Unfortunately, this has only lead me to pigeon hole and limit myself when it came to the tools I could use.

Since Jenny and I got married, she's gotten me to go through a particular Pilates workout, part of a 3 DVD set by Mari Winsor, about half a dozen times or so. To put it plainly, even if my ideas and thinking about fitness and training had not been evolving over the past few years, my mind still would have had as big a shock as my body did this morning and turned itself right around.

A simple 20 minute routine wiped me out and helped to ensure that I am engaging this whole process in absolute humility. For anyone who thinks Pilates and Yoga and other "fu-fu" programs and disciplines out there are easy, lame, a waste, only for bored women, not effective - you're wrong, and my cramping abs and sweaty mat are evidence.

It beyond humbling, it is degrading, to have your butt absolutely handed to you by something that for so long you dismissed as useless and sissy. Here is how hard it was for me, and will continue to be for at least a few weeks. Mari Winsor's star pupil sits front and center as the shining example of execution. Off to the side is Dabne, who demonstrates the modifications that can be used by those of us who are unable to perform the exercises as expected. I make Dabne look like a 12 year-old Chinese Olympic gymnast. I can't even keep up with the reserve squad! I'm this big pudgy ball of scrunched face and pinched fat and short breath. I'm about as flexible as a Southern Baptist, and my center of balance literally shifts with my belly. The instructor will set up each move, but my abs and back and neck are fatigued before she ever even tells us to start. I'm soon convulsing like a possessed epileptic, my stomach muscles from my ribs to my pelvis feel like they're melting, and Mari is just now peacefully informing us through a calm smile, "Let's start with our first of eight. And, go."

I'm (sort of) willingly going to do this again, and even try to make it a daily routine. At least I can use Brach as an excuse to stop the pain whenever he jumps on me and thinks we're wrestling.