Beating the Bulge

Off to Boot Camp

by Michael on 06/07/09 at 2:52 pm

Do you ever wish that sometimes you just didn’t open your big, fat mouth? Hand raising here. During my last coaching session with Susan she challenged me to ramp things up a bit. She said I was doing well with my morning walks, but encouraged me to find some hills to get my heart rate up. And me, being the student eager to please the teacher, I offered to commit to taking in a class at the YMCA during the upcoming week. I sat down with the schedule and eyed a boot-camp class on Monday morning at 6:30 a.m. I can do that, I thought. I’d be up walking at that time anyway.

I was immediately plagued with self doubt. What if it was too hard? What would the other people think? What if I couldn’t do it? I just talked myself through it. If it was too hard, I’d do what I could. Who cares what those people think; I don’t know them and may never see them again. And besides, if they’re thinking badly of a fat guy trying to do a boot-camp class, then what kind of people are they? Certainly not the kind of people I want to know. And finally, I wasn’t committing to doing a boot-camp class for the rest of my life – just one day.

I got myself out of bed and headed off this morning. There was no question that I was going. There was no fighting with myself or convincing myself to go. I just got up, hit the bathroom, filled my water bottle, grabbed a protein bar, and left.  I got to the YMCA and asked a staffer in the gym about the boot camp and he pointed out the teacher. I marched over to the teacher and said, “Hi, this is my first class. Can you tell me what I need to do?” This is so unlike me. I’d usually hover on the sidelines and wait for someone to ask me if I was there for the class, and then, I might hem and haw and say “yes,” or I might just pretend I was there to examine the parquet floors for an art project or something. The instructor pointed out all of the equipment I needed for the class and I trundled off to gather everything.

After setting up, I discovered I was at the front of the class, so I moved it all to the back of the class so I’d be more comfortable. I just get set up and this fat woman marches over to me, carrying all her equipment, and says with a fake smile: “Not that we’re territorial around here, but you took my spot!” Don’t you just hate fat people sometimes? We’re such a bunch of raging c*nts sometimes. I just looked at her, smiled, and said, “Oh did I? Sorry.” She’s lucky I didn’t pull a Canadian Tire on her. (A Canadian Tire involves you going off on the floor manager at the Canadian Tire store because he won’t check the price of the item you’re wanting to buy and calling him a mother f*cker, which results in him calling security to have you thrown out of the store.)

I started the class and things were going alright. It was challenging, but manageable. Then, after some warming up, the instructor split us into two groups: the other group had to walk the stairs (and there are a lot of them) and my group had to run the width of the gym doing various things: sprinting, walking like apes, crawling like upside grabs … it was horrible. And if it wasn’t for the woman who gave me hell earlier, I would have been the slowest one in the class. But I thought: I don’t care. So I’m the second slowest one. You’ve got to start somewhere. And I pushed myself to run faster because I sure wasn’t going to fall behind Miss You’re In My Spot. And I didn’t do the upside crab things because I just knew they were beyond my capability, but I did run. And I don’t run anywhere. I won’t even run for a bus.

Then it was our turn to do the stairs. They did me in. By the end of the stair climbing, I started to feel as though I was going to throw up. (Maybe eating a protein bar right before class isn’t a good thing.) I headed back to the class, skipped the second round of running, and caught my breath. I did one more set of stepping with a bar in my hand and doing three things at the same time (I hate that, don’t I, Phil?), and then, I packed it in when he sent everyone running again. I cringed at the thought of having to cart all my equipment back through the gym with everyone seeing that I had failed and couldn’t finish the class. But again, I just talked myself through it. Michael, you got up and got to the class by 6:30 a.m., you asked the instructor for help, you braved the woman with attitude, and you did what you can; now, you can take care of yourself and leave now, or you can stay and hurl all over the gym floor. I didn’t fail, I actually met quite a few challenges this morning.

I’m going to go back to that class because I didn’t really mind it. It was challenging and it got my heart rate up there really fast. And now I have a benchmark. I know I can do 30 minutes before I can’t breath, my face turns red as a lobster, and I’m ready to hurl. So, my goal now is to finish a class. I don’t care if it takes me another month, I want to be able to finish a whole hour-long bootcamp class. There’s a 45-minute class on Wednesday, I think I’ll take that one in and start shooting for that goal. There’s a yoga class I’m thinking about, too, but I might leave that for another week.

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