Pimp & Run

The title of today's post is a shout-out to my sister Chrissy who misread one of my facebook statuses and thought I joined an event called "Pimp & Run". I briefly conjured up mental images of my fellow Pump & Run buddies dressed up like pimps and, well, hookers running through the streets of Pennsville. The problem is that thigh-high leather boots just don't allow the feet to breathe; we wouldn't be half a mile out before the blisters set in. Anyway, I found her blunder to be precious and subject line-worthy.

So the blog is now nineteen posts in and you've probably already deduced that I really love my gym. I can assure you that my inner Big Girl cringes every time I say this out loud, though. She has very specific opinions about people who make obnoxious statements like, "I'm addicted to working out" and "I just had a killer run today" out in the open. And yet here I am, 14 months into my gym membership (not just a donation) and every time I walk into Jersey Fitness it's like I can hear the theme from "Cheers" playing in the background. I usually walk in, chat (flirt) with the guys up front, wind my way through the main room while conversing with the same five or six regulars on their preferred machines, and then rush to get dressed in the freezing cold locker room before class. **Side Rant: It's amazing how bonded the regular members become to specific machines. I definitely have a treadmill and a Spin bike that I gravitate towards, but I'm not yet at the point where I start saying things like my bike or my treadmill. I have been on the other end of that, unfortunately. I have been told that I couldn't use a specific bench press because another member used it at that specific time on that specific day every week for the past 12 years. I kind of expected this attitude from the weight room, though (as you'll read about later). What I did not expect was a stare down from a grandmother while I was running on the treadmill instead of attending a class. At first I thought my feet were clopping too loudly on the belt and disturbing her workout. But then the second I hopped off and wiped down the machine, the grandmother threw her magazine down and climbed on, impatiently. I understand that people have their preferences and their routines, especially if they've been members for a number of years. The thing is, I remember how insecure and intimidated I was when I first started going to the gym. I thought everyone was looking at me and silently judging my form and physique. So when I see that "my" Spin bike by the right side of the room, second from the back, is occupied by a doe-eyed new girl who has no idea that Chrissy's 30 minute "Express Ride" is going to be the longest, most intense, crotch numbing half hour of her life, I don't get upset over it; that was all of us at one time. End Rant**
 
Once I'm in the classroom, I have the same conversation with my classmates: that is, we usually complain about the difficulty of the previous night's class and whichever body part happens to be sore from it as a result. I love the ritual of these pre-class conversations. I enjoy the familiarity of standing in a cluster of ladies and collectively assessing the instructor's mood and/or the likelihood of being asked to do burpees/lunges/squats. Despite the fact that we all participate in the classes as individuals with very different levels of fitness, there is an understood camaraderie amongst all of us. It's pretty much the exact opposite of my gym experience in high school (man, do I miss the days of being picked last and having teenage girls jacked up on hormones and aggression yell at me for hitting a volleyball into the net...). In short, Jersey Fitness is kind of a comfortable haven of familiarity for me.

...with the exception of one spot: the weight room. Up until a few weeks ago, I never stepped foot into the free weight room at the gym. I grudgingly walked by the weight room in order to get to my classes or the locker room, but I usually turned my head and avoided direct eye contact with its inhabitants.  I have to be honest here when I say that the guys in that room scare the crap out of me. Perhaps it's because I'm physically attracted to skinny, nerdy men of Asian and/or Jewish extract and I'm genetically wired, as a robust woman of Sicilian descent, to want to nurture (fatten) them. And there's just no nurturing a guy whose neck veins pop whenever he benches. Perhaps it's because every guy in that room looks like the kind of guy that could kill me and make it look like an accident. Perhaps it's because whenever they look me over as I walk in, I feel like I'm being mentally sorted into a weight class. I know that these thoughts are unfair and I'm sure all the weight room guys are teddy bears....with bulging neck veins...and weird, territorial claims on bench presses...

The first time I went inside the weight room, I was with my friend Jenn and I distinctly hesitated for a full minute outside of its entrance. Jenn who, for lack of a better description, has the ballsiest attitude I've ever encountered in another short girl, strode into the room, threw her stuff next to a bench press, and starting loading weights onto the bar. I, on the other hand, took note of the number of guys in the room, calculated the distance to the nearest exit, and scoped out any potential weapons within an arm's reach. Jenn had a pretty straightforward attitude about lifting and waved off my concerns about the guys in the room. The weight room is pretty no nonsense with its monochromatic color scheme (black, white, and grey). It looks like any other weight room you'd see in any other gym (or prison) and I can see why it's so guy-friendly (as opposed  to the gym classroom, which has a predominantly female population). The classroom space also has weights, balls, mats, and kettlebells but they come in a variety of different colors. The weight room is open to the main floor and crammed with equipment while the classroom is a closed off, almost completely open space, with floor-to-ceiling mirrors everywhere. I mean, the two rooms pretty much scream "Dudes here" and "Chicks there". And I admit it, I like my hot pink 6-lb weights, my aqua blue foam mat, and the mother-of-pearl Pilates ball. I sometimes can't not look away from my reflection in the mirrors whenever my arm fat is rippling steadily during kickboxing class. The free weight room at Jersey Fitness was totally foreign territory to me*, as was the entire process of "pumping".

*I say me because I'd like to point out that there are some guys that work out in the classroom and some girls that lift in the weight room. I'm just emphasizing my being a pansy about it still.

This is where I'm incredibly grateful for the people in my gym community like Jenn. They will simply point me towards a bench press and talk me through it. Which brings us to the subject of bench pressing. Remember when I said that the gym has separate definitions for real words, like with "spinning"? This is also true for "bench pressing". This is actually gym-speak for "boob punching". The bench has it easy, as far as I'm concerned. I had no. freaking. clue how weak I was until I started the boob punching portion of "Pump & Run". For those of you who are unfamiliar with "bench pressing" it's where you lie on your back, on a bench, and you repeatedly lift a heavy, weighted bar just above your chest. During my first bench press my arms were quivering when I lifted the 45 lb bar, right before Jenn asked (very gently), "Should we add 5 more lbs to each end?" She could tell what I really wanted to say. She's been there. 

By our third or fourth session, I was lifting (wobbling) 75 lbs and everything was absolutely fine for the first 15ish hours that followed. I was sore, but it wasn't unbearable. I went to kickboxing and punched and jabbed without a problem. But then came the jacks. Jumping jacks, that is. I have a theory that jumping jacks were invented by a flat chested fitness instructor who somehow wanted to make her well-endowed female students suffer for distracting her line of vision with all their excessive bouncing. At the time of this particular kickboxing class I made the colossal mistake of choosing the "crap-I-need-to-do-laundry-and-this-is-my-in-case-of-an-emergency-go-to" sports bra that doesn't support me all that well. Every time I got jacked I'd close my eyes and open them up, expecting to be dangling from the ceiling and surrounded by little Mexican children swinging bats at my fun bags. By Tuesday's HIIT class I had to actually cross my arms over my chest during the jumpy, stepping segments to limit their movement (much to Chrissy's amusement; she crossed her arms and started Riverdancing).

I'm trying to look at lifting as an investment. Cardio is more like a budget with very clear parameters that I work with. After an hour of _____, I've burned ____ number of calories to be used or saved. With lifting, it's like I have to learn to accept that even though I'm constantly sore, and even though "muscle weighs more than fat and that's why you gained 4 lbs", I have to keep telling myself that I'm investing in my future healthy, toned, and less ripply-armed self. Mostly I still resent lifting, but I'm going to keep at it. My body still resembles a half melted ice cream cone, but I'm starting to get little hints of hope, here and there; the shapes of my quads, the way my knuckles and wrist bones are more pronounced, and these firmer lines just inside my waist. The signs are there, so I'll continue to pump and run, or pimp and run. But I am putting my foot down against the jacks...