"Feet on the floor. Hands behind your head. Contract that T-A muscle.
Big breath! Exhale as you lift! And hold! Chin off your chest! Keep
that muscle contracted! And don't forget to breathe!"
I'm
pretty good at following directions but all I can think of is: at least
she's not asking me to smile. You know how professional photographers
like to twist us up in knots--"Right shoulder down, left shoulder up,
chin left, eyes right, elbow forward, knees back"--and then insist that
we smile? I don't know about you, but by the time I make all my body
parts toe the line, I'm in no mood for smiling.
My
exercise class instructor does not insist that I smile while contorting my body, but the class makes me smile anyway. Not at
first: at first it makes me grimace and grunt and feel like a fool as I
try to stand on one foot without falling over sideways or try to
contract the right muscle and point my toes and relax my fingers and
keep my neck relaxed AND breathe.
Breathing can be a
problem. I don't exactly forget to breathe, but I get distracted and
sort of postpone breathing while I'm focusing on more immediate matters:
Which knee am I supposed to bend? When do I contract that muscle? Oops,
I'm falling over again! Then when I do remember to breathe, I'm always
exhaling when I'm supposed to inhale or vice versa.
I often feel clumsy and lumpy and dense in my exercise class until the
end when we lie on our mats and the music mellows out and I mindlessly follow directions with my eyes closed (so the ceiling fans won't make me dizzy--because it would be just
too humiliating to fall over while lying on my back on the floor!). Sometimes I remember to breathe but
even when I don't I always end up feeling like smiling.
2 comments:
What kind of class is it?
It's a core and flex class: strengthening the core muscles and improving flexibility. I'm learning to use the stability ball, which is pretty funny. I look like Horton trying to hatch the egg.
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