I Hate the Gym & Other Profound Thoughts
Here’s the thing: I hate the gym. I have a gym membership, but I never go. And Covid gave me a get-out-of-going-to-the-gym-for-the-foreseeable-future card, except that now everyone’s decided to move on with their lives. Still I remain resolute in my hatred of the gym, despite my age, and the increasingly urgent need to get some sort of exercise if I want to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle. So I found an exercise app, downloaded it, and felt very pleased with myself. That was three months ago, I think, though it may have been longer, which tells you how much I’ve used the app. I’ll give you a hint – 0.
Until this week!
I can’t really explain what happened, but I’m very pleased to announce that this morning is my THIRD workout. Now, to be fair, when the app asked me how long a workout I wanted, I chose the shortest option they gave, which is 10 minutes and I chose “low impact” because they didn’t have a “sedentary” option. Oh stop it, you’d have done the same.
So the first time I used it, I started the workout and before the trainer had even finished explaining the exercise we’d be doing the phone rang. I really did have to take the call so I paused it and then “forgot” to go back to the app. It was rude to leave that trainer hanging like that, but I forgot, I swear. That was about a month ago. Last week I thought, this is ridiculous, I have to do something because standing on one leg while in the shower, really doesn’t count as exercise, or does it? Anyway, I did a 10 minute workout Sunday morning. Oh yes I did! And here’s my takeaway from that workout – who knew that in ten short minutes one could work up a sweat? That’s the first revelation. The other is that ten minutes is actually a really, really, really, really LONG time to be gyrating about working muscles that I didn’t even know I had. And my final revelation about all of this is that I’m really out of shape because the next day I was sore, though that didn’t stop me from doing another workout and then this morning another.
I know some of you are going to ask what the app is. I’m going to tell you, but just know that I don’t work for this company nor do I receive anything from them for telling all of you about it. Just wanted to be clear about that. The app is FitOn. I’m thinking there are a lot of exercise apps out there, I don’t even remember how I learned of this one, though knowing me, I googled, “Best exercise app” and this one came up on a list with others. When you first download and open it, it asks you, Do you want us to send you notifications. Now I know about this whole “notification” business, it’s really code for nagging. Basically they’re asking, “are you okay if we nag you?” So I said, Yes. Go ahead, see if I care. In fact I dare you. Nag away. That was Sunday and sure enough on Monday morning I get a notification at 7:45am asking me if I’m ready to work out. NO. No, I’m not ready, nor will I ever be, but how can I really hold my head up and say no to a 10 minute workout? I mean, seriously, I spend more time gazing out the window, so I figured, okay, fine, but I’m not putting on workout clothes or shoes, so I wore my bathrobe and slippers out of defiance. And that 2nd workout packed a lot into 10 minutes. Now all the muscles that were already sore were joined by others. It’s amazing how many muscles the human body has.
No one said this was going to be pretty.
This morning when I got that alert on my phone while I was practicing my French, I thought, okay, I got this and in preparation I even had on pants and a workout bra. TMI? Whatever. So I pressed “yes” and did an upper body sculpting workout that was 13 minutes long. See? That’s how they do it. It’s like a gateway drug. They start you at “low impact” and “10 minutes” and then they squeeze in a couple more minutes and before you know it, you’re working out for an hour. One has to very careful.
Now most of you know that I’m off to France next week, and for those of you who are saying, what? How did I miss that? you evidently haven’t signed up for my newsletter, because I talk all about that. You can sign up now by going to the right hand side bar of this blog and signing up now! By the way, I don’t have time to write a newsletter more than once or maybe twice a month, so just know you won’t get inundated with newsletters from me if you sign up. Seriously, look how often I manage to write a blog post? It’s been very spotty lately.
Next week at this time I’ll be in Paris! And I’ll have my FitOn app with me, because that’s the thing about apps, wherever you are, they are too. It’s a beautiful thing, depending on how you look at it.
A bientôt!
Recent comments