A New Exercise Dominatrix

I've decided that I need to do some regular exercise that is a bit more involved than walking the dogs every day. Since just after xmas, I've been doing half an hour of pilates three times a week. But I'm not in a class, haven't paid any extra fees, I don't even have to leave home. It's the magic of YouTube.

In general, I spend about 0.000001 seconds per day on YouTube offerings. But there's this Aussie named Angela and her partner Nina who, with a click, will direct you through a variety of pilates workouts. Nina is a silent partner, not uttering a peep in any of the half dozen videos I've watched of them. She gets stuck demonstrating the "easier" options while Angela spurs us on to greater heights of effort.

There are workouts for abs, for the butt, and several different, simple to moderately difficult general routines. I love them! I can do them in my bedroom in the morning after I feed the dogs, who are then happy to doze on the bed, occasionally lifting an eyelid to see what I'm doing, while I grunt and roll around on my mats (I'm a delicate flower; I need two mats stacked together).

Angela is probably in her 40s and she looks fabulous! The Aussie twang is always entertaining. But best of all, she's a subtle exercise dominatrix, enticing you to attempt exercises that look simple. You do your best, got to keep Angela happy, but by the next day, you are thinking, good god, I had no idea I had that many different muscles in my butt.

Of course, I know perfectly well that I am my own dominatrix--Angela is certainly not setting my alarm or forcing me to do anything. But we all create these kinds of fantasy narratives to help us get along, get through.

I know that I feel better, that I sleep better, that I am more alert during the day when I exercise regularly. All that for a small, regular investment of time with Angela and Nina.

Be Happy, Be Healthy

As part of my continuing efforts to keep myself occupied, I joined a Beginning Running class sponsored by the Dhahran Road Runners Club. I paid a small fee to join the club and a small fee for the class, which meets for two nights a week for eight weeks. The class is based on interval training, building up longer periods of running in between increasingly shorter periods of resting (walking). This was something of a spur of the moment decision. I want to drop some weight but I’m not having much success. My diet is under control (for example, I eat vegetarian at least three days a week) and I already walk the dogs (briskly) for about an hour and a half each day between their morning and evening walks. I take the stairs at work. By all standards, I eat better and get far more exercise than most people. But I just can’t seem to lose more than a pound or two.

Last night was the first meeting of the class. I showed up on time, quarter to the hour, and was amazed to see an enormous crowd already gathered at the bleachers next to the running track at the school. There were well over a hundred people who had signed up for this class! It was quite a sight: people of all colors and ages and sizes, even kids. There were a few enormous Saudi guys inevitably drenched in perfume. (I will never be able to clear my head of the cloying, nauseating scent of Arabs wafting perfume at every step. It’s everywhere: at work, in the shops, on the running track, it sticks to door handles and seat belts in taxis, even the money reeks of perfume. They reapply it throughout the day and when they get in groups, the combined effect ends up smelling very much like a dumpster in the summer. Last year, I measured the distance between lamp posts on the path around the golf course by pacing it out [40 feet] and discovered that I can smell the perfume of some of those guys over a distance of more than 120 feet while outdoors—it’s that strong! They are continually surrounded by a fug of it.) But back to the beginning runner horde.

As all of you know, being successful at something like a running class often requires an exercise partner. I scanned the crowd to see if I knew anyone, and recognized a few faces from work and dog classes, but decided to get on the track and see what happened.

To my surprise, I was sort of adopted by a Kiwi who is an executive secretary to a manager in the power unit (she’s rather dark skinned, looks kind of Asian, and might be part Maori, which is interesting). She commented on my spiffy neon yellow shoes (you probably saw many examples of these if you watched any of the track events from the Olympics; I told her I bought them because I hoped that they would help me run faster) and then we simply continued the rest of the class side by side.

With our focus on running and walking and setting a good but reasonable pace and a bit of chatting in between, the knowledge that we were on the track with more than a hundred other people sort of faded away. Even though it was work, it was relaxing to engage in such a simple activity. I am looking forward to giving this a go.

The Step Dominatrix Returns!

Erika, whom I've christened the Step Dominatrix for her demanding style in leading her exercises classes, is back! Pregnant with her third kid, she had to gradually back off then completely hand over her classes to a substitute instructor this spring. Then she was out for a month after she actually had the baby. But this Thursday was her first day back! Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depends on the perspective), I chose that day to return to exercise class myself--the Thursday morning "boot camp", an hour and a half of cardio, weight training, balance work, a real grab bag of stuff. Next to step class, it is Erika's signature workout.

And she was in fine form, zipping around to every station, constantly correcting and praising as needed.

I really appreciate her methods. She combines motivation and encouragement with a no-mercy, no-slackers attitude. Of course teaching basic dog obedience is a far cry from delivering an hour-long step workout but a lot of the underlying concepts are the same. A good instructor knows how to combine the carrot and stick to keep students both challenged and successful. I've not managed to find a moment to tell her that, as an instructor myself, I have learned a lot from her, but I think that I need to do that. Everyone likes to be appreciated, even the Step Dominatrix.

The Step Dominatrix

I started with Valorie's step classes. She's got a dance-like style to her routines. As I posted earlier, my lack of coordination and grace left me struggling through the first few classes. But I'm starting to figure things out. Not that I'm suddenly graceful or anything like that, no. I am increasingly able to muddle through more or less on the beat now. My big struggle is to move my arms at the same time I am moving my legs. There are some moves that result in a total disconnect between them and I resort to the usual flapping but I'm slowly getting better at that too.

Then Erika showed up. She's an American with decades of experience teaching exercise like yoga and step. She started up a second evening step class. I call Erika the Step Dominatrix--step class run by a marine drill sergeant shouting commands over a backdrop of peppy 80's remixes and current pop tunes. All delivered with a smile, for sure, but Erika's classes just kick my ass. I hobble panting out to the car afterward.

And in a good way, because I realized I can work much harder than I could when I first started, I now put more effort into Valorie's classes so that I end up with a total ass-kicking two nights a week.

It's great! On nights with step class, I sleep like a stone, often waking up in the exact same position that I fell asleep in, apparently not having moved at all during the night.

It's easy to get carried away with the zeal of the newly converted but those endorphins are as addictive as any drug.

Step

Even though I take the dogs out for long walks to the jebels nearly every day, I felt that I wasn't getting the cardio exercise that I needed. I've not been making it to the gym as often as I would like. Perhaps I could use some peer pressure or somebody telling me what to do? So last week I went to a step class.

I've never been to a step class before, never been to any sort of organized exercise class before, but I had a good idea of what was involved. It seemed like it might be what I was looking for.

There's just one little problem: I have the grace of a turtle on its back. I've been this way all my life. Step class? What the hell was I thinking?

The instructor would call out "basic right, basic right" and you could put money down that I'd be stepping left instead.

I noticed that everyone would put their arms down when their knees went up. I tried to do this and could sometimes manage to do it once or twice, never multiple times in a row. I gave up and just flapped my arms around the way they seemed to be able to go. Yes, flapping.

There was a step called "the superman" where you step up onto one end of the step on one foot, extend your arms and push up onto your toes with that foot while extending your other leg behind you--something like a suspended leap. Surrounded by all of these tiny Asian and Arab women, I felt like a lump and knew I looked totally ridiculous.

For a few minutes I started to get frustrated. I can do all of these complex choreographies on an agility field or in a flyball lineup with my dog but I can't figure this out? Then I realized that it doesn't matter. That wasn't the point of my being there at all. I didn't know anybody there and it doesn't matter what I look like, that I'm stepping with the wrong foot. Nobody was keeping score. It wasn't a competition. There was no test afterwards. I realized that as long as I kept moving, I could catch up most of the time for a few counts.

In the end, I sweated my ass off for an hour. It was an hour of flailing limbs to be sure. At least I never tripped over anything. I could hardly walk from the building to the car afterwards. It felt great!