Half-year's Resolution?

This Nike commercial keeps popping up on Hulu, and I adore it.



I have a lot of mixed feelings about exercise. Like, I get that it's good and necessary, but I was also a indoor-oriented bookworm for pretty much all my young life. I never learned how to ride a bike (YES, I KNOW, OKAY), and my tiny short-person legs meant I was pretty much the worst at running. I could not do even one pull-up during those torturous Presidential Fitness exam things. I was pretty good at shooting hoops, as long as I could just stand in one place.

When I was an undergrad, I discovered I liked weights pretty well--it was part of my physical fitness requirement, and I had a couple of friends to be my gym buddies. Over the years, though, I fell out of practice.

While I was at Purdue, my friend Summer Cushman opened up her own yoga studio, Community Yoga, and I signed up for a class. It was pretty amazing. Summer's moved to Seattle since then, and I've moved out here to Iowa. I am, however, thrilled that Summer's now offering a weekly audio yoga class. I'm behind a couple of weeks, but I'm really digging it so far.

I actually joined a gym when I moved out here to Iowa, and they have a pretty decent yoga class, as well as a power yoga class. (There is one yoga substitute teacher I call Maroon 5 Yoga, and I actually quit going for a while because I could. Not. Stand it.) I joined, however, because back in Lafayette my friend Gracemarie made me her gym buddy so we could go to Body Pump at the YMCA. It was painful, and I loved it--weight-lifting combined with the cardio I so often avoid. Here in Ames, I started doing Group Power, which is parallel.



Because my work schedule is pretty much business hours, I tried a couple of other classes to see how I felt about them. Pilates was frustrating, because again, I have short limbs that just can't do some of the stuff. And since most others are taller than me, it is tough to gauge what modifications are appropriate, and yeah, I guess I could do the research, but I also do research ALL THE TIME. In any case, even then, I liked Pilates WAY WAY MORE than Pilates-yoga hybrids, mostly because I would rather just do yoga, if it comes down to it.

I also took a tai chi class, in short Yang-style form. In five weeks, I think we only got through half of the form, but I enjoyed it. I keep meaning to return to it--must become more disciplined.

Discipline, really, is my problem right now. I don't walk as much as I did in Lafayette (my part of town is a fair distance from the "nice place to walk" part of town), and I sort of hermitted during the winter. Driving in snow is terrifying! I did a bit of yoga and tai chi and bhangra dance workout in my apartment, but it is hard to stay motivated when I'm all by myself. SO. I will make this public, for whoever might happen to be reading this: I am going to seriously start going to the gym again. I am privileged to not have to worry too much about weight (my body/health equilibrium is pretty stable, plus or minus about fifteen pounds), as long as I'm eating otherwise healthily, but the endorphins from working out are pretty great.

My plan is this: Summer's audio yoga class mid-week and power yoga on Saturdays. Group Power class on Sundays. And once a week, tai chi and/or bhangra. If schedule precludes going to one of the classes, I commit myself to walking very fast on a treadmill for a while, cursing my luck. Because UGH. TREADMILLS. THEY ARE THE WORST.