The “Resolutionaries” Are Back

Go home. Seriously. I mean – OK, that’s not a nice thing to say but it doesn’t make it less true. I have 100% full respect for the folks out there who make new years resolutions to slim down and shape up. I do.

But why do you all have to do it at once?

You are clogging my gym and taking my machine and you don’t have one ounce of gym ettiquette and it’s not that you shouldn’t be there but can you perhaps make your big resolution in, like, March? Or perhaps resolutions can be done by last name: A-K in January, L-P in June, Q-Z in September.

Here’s my theory, and please take this with all the compassion in the world: If you make a “resolution” you are bound to fail.

It’s time sensitive. “I will start going to the gym in January!” But let’s say the kids karate is running late more often than not or you get the flu or your shoes are worn out and you asked for the new coach purse instead of running shoes, so what’s the point?  You go the first week but you can’t make it the next. Or you go the first two weeks but February is a dud. So you give up and you say, “Maybe next year!”

But I am solution oriented, of course. So here’s my plan: Make your “resolution” in March. Or April. Or halfway through October. What does this accomplish? Well, A… it gets the influx of non-gym-using newbies out of the gym. B if gives you a chance at success! You aren’t making a true resolution in March. You’re making a decision to change. A life decision. The decision to start anew without the baggage of your old life, but more importantly without the pressure of the new year.

I am a firm believer in making a change. I did it myself. One day I woke up and said, “OK – doc says I need to lose weight and today is the day.” It was March. It was perfect.  I didn’t say “tomorrow” or “in the new year.” I said, my life was my life yesterday and it will be tomorrow and I don’t need some big event to get my life in gear.

If I sound bitter it’s not because I want you to fail. Rather, it’s because I want you to succeed and I know you aren’t going to do it this way. And in the meantime you’re taking up all the fucking ellipticals and stacking the weights like a jerk.

OK. Maybe that is a little bitter.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Gym Anxiety

It’s been confirmed by my completely awesome, body-pumping, co-gymming boss (who may or may not read this blog) that I am not crazy for being nervous. What am I nervous about? I’m going to a new gym tonight. The one on the other side of town.

I decided that I didn’t feel like thinking about my workout tonight, so instead of going to the gym and doing free weights as would typically be the plan for  a Wednesday night, I’m going to a second body pump class this week where I can jam along to the music and leave feeling… pumped? (Note: must stop using the word “pump” so often. It could scare the kiddies.) But this class is not at my “home gym” but rather a different location in the same chain.

But for whatever reason, I cannot get past this little twinge of anxiety that I have venturing out into the great gym-wilderness without a safety net. My boss says that it’s actually not that uncommon, unless, she points out, she’s also crazy. Which I can pretty much say factually she is not. It’s the “first day of school” syndrome that we tend to get past at our gym within the first few weeks. Where are the locker rooms? Is there special gym etiquette that I don’t know about? Will the routine be different? Will the instructor single me out? (Can I nab my stellar spot in the corner with access to two mirrors? FORM IS PARAMOUNT!)

I’ll let you know how it goes. I guarantee it can’t be as bad as I’m making it out… unless I run into my entire high school class which is entirely possible and would be tra-gic.

Have you ever experienced gym anxiety?

Time for PT?

To Physical Therapy or Not to Physical Therapy… that is the question plaguing me today, months after being diagnosed with the most annoyingly named diagnosis ever: Runner’s Knee.

I haven’t actually run properly since… January? February? March? Sometime Q1 when I decided my knee pain really wasn’t something to just completely ignore. Since then, I have tried a veritable cornucopia of cardiovascular activities including but not limited to…

• “Power” yoga
• “Power” walking
• Spinning
• Swimming
• Elliptical-ing
• Kickboxing

All of them hurt in one way or the other and I’m getting a bit distraught. I can’t do lunges or squats, and I can’t do any cardio… That is a huge loss as far as my caloric expenditure goes since those big muscles burn so many nasty calories when you work them out properly.

I have been diligently doing my straight leg lifts and leg kick backs and all the little exercises the doc said I could do safely, but I am just not seeing an improvement.

Hence the question at hand: Do I go to PT to try and get this thing fixed the right way? Is that even the right idea? Doctor Cocky who diagnosed me said it wasn’t necessary since I went to the gym so much, but I feel like if they watched me doing the excercises, perhaps I’d get closer to fixing it sooner.

Y’all always have great advice. Bring it on. I need you.

Runner’s Knee – Go on, flatter me.

My knee. My &*#^& knee.

I finally went to get it checked today and after reporting on my symptoms (which I probably could have stopped listing as soon as I said, “I just started running”) the mildly overconfident doctor got up and said in that really annoying “I’m about to knock your socks off” voice… “Sounds like you’ve got runner’s knee.”

So he came over and started just manhandling my 2-days-since-shaving legs. Poke, twist, prod, bend, scrunch.

“Does this hurt?” No.

“Does this hurt?” No.

“Does this hurt?” No.

(Dude, you fucking know what’s wrong with me already so how about we get on with it…)

“Does this hurt?” Twist-Push… YEAH! THAT HURTS THANKS!

Yeah – Runner’s knee. *eye rolls*

So – what does that mean? No running. FuX0r. But I’ll go with “duh” on that one. So, I ask what I can do. Before he can even open his mouth I know the answer. Same one my foot doctor gave me. “Swim.” Well… how handy. Because I suck at swimming. And have no pool to swim in that doesn’t also contain urinating/screaming/obnoxious children.

Oh, and the elliptical! Yes! Because I fucking hate the elliptical!

I can ride the bike as long as my knees don’t extend too far. And I am pretty sure I can rollerblade. Yes. I still rollerblade. And I am AWESOME.

He asks, “So besides cardio, what’s the rest of your strength training routine?” I tell him. Then I make a bet – “Bet I can’t lunge or squat!” Man I wish I had money. He said, no. No lunging. No squatting. He actually said they are like the worst possible thing for knees which makes me wonder why they are so darn popular amongst, ya know, everyone. And I guess the question is… what else? All have to shallow-bend or straight-leg exercises. Joy. No ass for Jane. I was banking on those squats.

It’ll take time to heal (yay!) and there’s not a lot I can do besides these lame exercises (yay!) but eventually, maybe, it’ll get better just in time for me to never run again.

Good news: My knees are picture perfect :) I’m not nearly as knock-kneed as I could be, and my knee caps are perfectly aligned. Really, I just did running wrong. Apparently if you start too late (26 years old really is old. I knew it!) and over work your shit, then you break. And I broke.

But because I had runner’s knee, that means I was a runner for whatever short amount of time I could run. And that, my friend, is a win.

Hello, Stranger!

Either he goes to the gym every day, or he goes to the gym every day that I’m there. Which, while flattering, seems highly unlikely.  Way more unlikely that I’d want it to be.

He was the hunk in the neighborhood growing up. Tall, Latin, star of the baseball team… And best friends with my neighbor, Junior. The neighbor who harassed me every day for almost my entire childhood. (The neighbor who could probably buy me and all of my wordly possessions if he wanted to… then, like, burn them and rebuy them all, and then, like, give them to the homeless and buy me a third set. Because he can. Bastard.)

So the point of this is I was the biggest loser of all time ever as a kid and that lasted pretty much until 3 years ago — OK, last week. Whatever. Don’t be mean. So my neighbor Junior and his best friend spent a lot of time either a) ignoring me, or b) making my life a living hell. That lasted until high school when they both ceased to acknowledge my existence. Blessing, meet curse.

Well with the advent of the “facebooks” I “friended” both of these “people” and then proceeded not to have any contact with them because that’s weird.

But when I was at the gym a few months ago, I noticed this really tall, attractive, Latin guy who was really well built and didn’t listen to any music. Then I saw him a few weeks later and something went off in my head. He looked familiar. He was The Stud. He got built. And hot-er.

And clearly he had no clue who I was.

But I started realizing that he was always at the gym. And was always on some apparatus that faced whatever apparatus I was on. There was eye contact. But absolutely no acknowledgment. To be fair, until today I had never even seen him smile at the gym. And he still doesn’t listen to music. But the question is… do I say something? Re-introduce myself? Don’t get me wrong – mama has no interest in this character, but it’s just bizarre. He knows me. We grew up together.

So I came up with a few options:

1a) Approach him and say something to the effect of, “So, are you here every night? Or just every night that I’m here. Because that would be creepy. And not likely.”

1b) Send him the same message on Facebook (because were are totally “friends”) but add “I figured this was safer so we can still continue to ignore each other at the gym” — this would allow for the less awkward first encounter.

2) Approach him and say, “Hi. I’m Jane. Junior’s neighbor. How’s it going? I see you here a lot…”

3) Leave him the fuck alone because clearly if he wanted to say hi, he would have. And no one needs akwardness at the gym.

I haven’t had to use my “gym balls” since Plank Guy, so this would be a new fun challenge.

In the comments – tell me what you would do! Are you an at-the-gym-friend-maker?

Hard Ass Jane?

Well, fuckin’ a. Duh – I’m a total hard ass.

At Body Pump the other night, a group of giggling girls from a not-so-local high school graced us with their presence. I would say there were a veritable “gaggle” of said girls, all honking in unison at a joke no one else understood cared about.

I got it. Fine. High school girls giggle. In gaggles. It’s just how they do. They are harmless enough. I guess it wasn’t until the end of the class, the cool down, when I had finally had enough. We were all quiet, stretching, lamenting the pain that were in/going to be in the next day. The sappy cool down music was soothing us as we gently released all of our old-people stress. And there they were. Giggling louder than ever. TheyWouldn’tShutTheFuckUp. My evil glares had gone unnoticed. The mimed gun to my head directed was not attracting nearly the reaction I had hoped. So I snapped.

“How about you just shut up?”

Silence.

AWESOME! POWER! I PWN!

I felt bad for like a millisecond until, that is, I realized how lovely it was to finally be pumping in peace.

In the locker room, my class-partner in crime said to me, “Wow! I didn’t know you were such a hard ass, Jane!” My response? “I hated them in high school. I hate them now.”

Stupid high school girls. Gah.

Cause for Celebration: No Diet Day

Body Pump was kind of awesome last night. I almost wrote “sucked” in stead of “was kind of awesome”, but that would have been a squideon of a lie. (Squidegon?!) The substitute instructor was rad. Short and perky. And she counted, which, by the way, is the best quality in a fitness instructor. The ability to fucking count, in order, without getting distracted.

So after body pump, I came home to do some baking. The problem with baking is that you have to do it with a spoon. Ya know, the mixing and scooping, and whatnots. Spoons are the thing you do eating with. So naturally, as the baking goes on, the spoon becomes en-fooded, and then has to be eaten off of. It’s just the order of things.

Ugh. So I ate and ate the thing that I was baking in its not-yet-baked form until Jane’s tummy hurt. And then, once the thing that I was baking was baked, I had to taste it because it was a new recipe and I would never give an untested recipe to anyone I cared about. Selfless, I tell you. I sacrificed all those hard-earned extra calories for the safety and taste-security of my closest friends.

But here’s the best part: Rather than continue to lament the completely wasted Body Pump class, I can now rejoice in my inadvertent celebration of a Inter-National Holiday! Apparently, accoring to FitSugar (with whom I have a love/hate relationship) today is International No Diet Day!

So, I’d like to send a big “Cheers, eh?!” to Canada’s National Eating Disorder Information Centre for helping me not feel bad about the million calories I licked off the spoon last night, and encourage everyone to go eat something bad today!

Summer Camp for Old People – My mom’s gym

I spent the weekend in FL – 3 “glorious” days. It was my mom’s birthday. My parents live in an “Active Adult Community” (aka summer camp for the aging). You have to be over 55 to live there, and your kids have to be over 18 if they are going to live with you. The whole place sucks. If you go to the pool, and close your eyes, you swear you’re in the old country. Or New York. The accents are thick and the volume is set at 11.

They sit in circles and gossip about what the other old people are doing. Oh – and they cause trouble! My mom said that they can’t bring gym bags to the “sports club” anymore, only clear bags, because people were stealing weights. Stealing weights!!! They fight over tennis times and police one another at the pool – “Are you sure you can eat heee-ah?” They take aerobics classes and whine about the instructors. “Ohh… she’s tough! What does she think we’re 20 or somethin’?” *sigh*

So with all that said – going down to spend time at summer camp is never all that pleasant. But their gym is incredible. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of going to the gym with my mom.

When you go there,You know the nagging thing moms do? The looking-over-your-shoulder-on-the-computer-asking-”what’s that?” thing? My mom does that, oh, does she ever. But this weekend when I was down there, she brought her 4-star nagging to the gym.

The gym is my safe space. When I needed to zen out after a day and a half of dealing with my mom and dad, I didn’t go to the beach, I went to the gym. Looking hot. Because some of these old people have super hot kids. Not many — but some. Unfortunately, my mom came along with me.

“So, Jane. Can we work out together?”

“No.”

5 minutes later -

“Can you show me a few exercises?”

“No.”

With phat beats coming from the overhead speakers (Johnny Angel? Really?), I was pumped up. Gah. I stuck my earphones in and turned up the volume. I went straight into lunges. I was super focused. I needed this workout.

“Jane? *mumble mumble*” I saw her lips moving, but I didn’t have a clue, mid-lunge, what the heck she wanted.

I dropped my left earphone – “Jane, what are those for?”

“Your legs, ma. They’re bad for your knees. Don’t bother.”

I didn’t mean to blow her off, but I am really used to working out alone. With all the voices in my head. I mean music! The music.

I finally think she got the point and left me to my workout. Finally. It was the only 25 minutes I had sans nagging for my entire stay. It was a great workout. I showed up the one other old guy working out there. Hell yeah I can curl as much as you, old guy.

I am so sad.

Lessons learned: Gym alone, always. Show up everyone in the gym regardless of how old and decrepit they are. Always look cute. Because some of those old decrepit guys you’re showing up have cute sons. Or so I hear.

The Grunt

Do you grunt? That situationally specific, quasi-erotic, quasi-excruciating sound heard echoing through the gym?

I am typically *not* a grunter. If I ever do let one slip, it typically blends into the white noise of the packed club, stifled by the more manly grunts in the sweat-laden, testosterone-thick free weight room.

But today I worked out at the gym in my building. It’s nice, but small, and doesn’t have enough mirrors (a topic for another time). I started my workout with the entire gym to myself. Dark and echoey, I lifted, lunged, and pressed, bopping along to the music playing a little too loudly in my crappy sony earbuds.

Some guy walked in ruining my groove around the middle of my second set. Bastard. But I soldiered on in our awkward propinquity. After his stretches and my lunges he headed to the gazelle elliptical thing and I moved on to pushups.

Big girl pushups, bitches. F- yeah!

I got through 13 with no problem. 14 was a struggle, and on 15 I lost it.

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAGH!

The unintentional grunt. It echoed. So. Awkward.

He turned. I could feel it. What was he thinking? What a freak? What a hot, grunting muscle-y chick? Doubt it.

While moderately embarrassed, I just got up and finished my workout, with a little less exuberance than before. I couldn’t afford another slip up. Not because he cared, but because I do not want to slip into the grunts-at-the-gym club. No one likes the gym grunter. I cannot be one of them.

So tell me, are you a gym grunter?

Thank you, Dish Network!

I got off work at 8pm. I forgot my iPod. My workout got off to an amazing start.

I go down to the basement to start lifting. But something wasn’t right. For 10 minutes, I heard Big Brother (and Sister) talking about how to setup and use the Dish Network. Somehow, overhead speakers had been flipped to the Dish Network’s informational channel – audio only.

By then, everyone in the free weight area was eying eachother, begging “What. The. Fuck?” of the fellow gymrats. They did it without saying a word. Until, ya know, I said a word.

“Um… anyone else cool with this whole Dish Network thing?” I got some grins… and then, it happened.

He walked down the stairs. If it were a movie he’d have been in slow motion, smoke would have come billowing out from behind him, and the dramatic music would have crescendoed (and he would have started tossing his hair… if he was a chick… in a slinky dress…). But, we were at the gym, so he just kind of bounced down the stairs and started his workout.

Then, he took his earbud out of his ear and gazed at the ceiling. He had noticed the Dish Network soundtrack and, through his own music, had just joined the ranks of the annoyed.

This Jane calls that an “in”.

“Yeah – I know, right? What’s that about?” I’m so clever.

He gives a smirk and a nod. His name is Plank Guy*. After I went upstairs to save the day and came down successful, I walked over and said “hi.” “So, you used to be Plank Guy*, but I guess I can call you “Earth Treks Guy” now.” (Yes, I said that. Yes, I called him Plank Guy.)

“Oh, you go there? Do you climb?”

Yes. Yes I do. Or at least I do for the purposes of this conversation. It wasn’t a lie. It was a perfectly reasonable, if not mildly overblown, statement of fact.

5 minutes later, I got back to working out. No one likes to be interrupted. But on the way out, I stopped him.

“My name is Jane. I call you Plank Guy, but….”

“I’m [Not Plank Guy]. Nice to meet you, Jane.”

Fuck. Yeah. Another one in the bag.

*Plank Guy is Plank Guy because he gets into plank position and stays there for up to 4 minutes while reading an article positioned below him. It’s amazing to behold for any number of reasons.