From Joanie:
I hate exercise. When I say I hate exercise, I mean that I hate repetitive, boring routines that seem and feel like a waste of time.
I’ve never had a problem with moving—dancing, climbing trees, riding horses. These are the activities that if I could feasibly and inexpensively do them on a daily basis, I would.
Now, I know some of you would say, she likes dancing! And then suggest zumba. I hate to disappoint the friends who are die-hard zumba fans, and the couple of friends who are instructors, but I just don’t like it. Call me a prude, but something about being in a room full of gyrating women shouting “woo!” like a sorority girl at a bar on her 21st birthday each time they “feel the burn” doesn’t really do it for me.
I also find that most fitness teachers are not rhythm Nazis like I am, and I simply am incapable of dancing off the beat.
I started dance in college, and have intermittently taken classes that I loved, but, most often have not been able to find classes for my level that are age appropriate. I really don’t want to be in the intermediate tap class with 9-year-olds. It’s the little bit of pride I’ve got left.
Some of the readers who know me well know I swam and dove competitively in high school. They may also remember that I wasn’t very good at either, and, as I found out then, my joints are made of salt water taffy, and I developed bursitis, or “swimmer’s shoulder.”
Several of my swim team peers thought I was faking the injury, an idea I still can’t grasp—why would I want to “get out of” my chosen after school activity? Cause there was so much else to do with my time?
I still have to do the physical therapy I was told to do to prevent old-person pain in my young-person shoulders thanks to something that was, frankly, a time-filler for me.
This does not motivate me to want to work out even more.
You would think my lack of working out and my love for cookies would result in me being morbidly obese. However, as many of my elementary school teachers would acknowledge, I am “fidgety.”
What I could easily call “microworkouts” my teachers decided called “irritating,” which carries a hint of judgment.
I love yoga, which, like all fitness classes, can be repetitive. I also find that I’m often not challenged enough. See comment above about my joints being made of taffy. While choreographers and my husband never complain about my being so bendy, I do get looks from the less flexible persons in the yoga classes, and am often asked if I’m double jointed. Nope, just flexible and have rubber band material where my tendons should be.
More than any other type of exercise, I hate running. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to be chased by a bear (although running is notoriously NOT what you should do when confronted with a bear attack).
I just have no reason to run. I mean, that season of cross country in high school was because I liked a boy on the team, not for my health!
It also doesn’t help that a voice teacher told me that running would promote shallow breathing in my singing and have adverse effects on my voice. It’s like having a doctor’s excuse for not being active.
But bears, mountain lions, or perhaps, the inevitable zombie apocalypse would give me a legitimate reason to start to run.
Rather unusually, the best way I’ve found to get my heart rate up (other than the one you thought of first), is to watch a zombie movie, or the new AMC show, The Walking Dead.
As Michael can attest, my watching zombies is both aerobic and hilarious. I dance about, pointing out the dead that the characters can’t see EVEN THOUGH IT’S RIGHT BEHIND THEM. ABOUT TO TAKE A BITE!! NO!! THERE ARE ZOOOMBIES IN THERE! DON’T GO IN THERE!!
If I could, I’d put a series of pictures of my self-described “nervous dance” for impending zombie-attack doom scenes for characters I grow attached to simply because they’ve survived being eaten alive by their friends and families. But I still have just an ounce of dignity left, so, no pictures.
For now.
And I see how quickly they react to the zombies, and how, as noted in the movie Zombieland, cardio is essential for escaping the clutches and constant snacking on human flesh of the living dead.
And while my workout habits will remain intermittent and a bit lazy for now, when the dead rise, I promise I’ll be on a treadmill or the track.
Just as soon as I finish eating these cookies people.