Middle-Aged Musings
“Just go at your own pace...” Yeah, right. By Teresa Pesce.
This column is dedicated to the Middle-Aged among us, lost in society’s Bermuda Triangle between being young and being “older”, acknowledged only by ads selling them cosmetics to make them look young again and comfort bras to ease the inevitable triumph of gravity.
In group exercise classes an often heard instruction is, “Justgo at your own pace.” Many fitness class leaders say that. What else are they going to say? “Go away”?
Should they publicly cull you from the herd and tell you to go to the “Heaven Help Them” exercise class where a single sit-up is considered a triumph? So they welcome you, and once you’re there it’s a little hard to participate for a total of five minutes in a 60-minute class, so you push yourself. It’s only human to want to keep up! I’ve even seen classes of veteran exercisers trying to keep up with their instructor as he did multiple sets of 50 perfect sit-ups, while the participants gradually weakened and were pulling, heaving, hauling and hoisting themselves into sitting positions any way they possibly could – with little or no effect on their abdominals and quite a lot of strain on their necks.
Once I overheard an athletic young woman in her early twenties tell a fellow exerciser that after a particular exercise class, her gluteal muscles were so sore she couldn’t sit down on a toilet seat for three days. If I pushed myself to keep up with a class like that, I wouldn’t be out of the ICU for three days.
So what should one do? If you want to be part of a class, get stubborn and go at your own pace, just as the leader suggested! If you do three sit-ups properly, you may well have done better than someone flailing out 50 of them under group pressure. And there’s another thing about it – if you go as slowly as is good for you, you’ll be able to increase your repetitions soon, which is far better than if you strain yourself to keep up but fall short, and get discouraged and give up!
Be strong! Be brave! Don’t give in to the temptation to keep up with the throng as an instructor carols out for everyone to do three sets of 25 abdominals, followed by another three sets of 25 abdominals. Bring a good book with you, do as many repetitions as you can, and then stop and read quietly. (After all, there’s nothing wrong with improving your mind along with your body.) Open a bottled water and hydrate. Maybe if we all do this often enough, others in the class may be emboldened to respect their limits and join us until the exercise room becomes a library nook of sip-broken silence, and the instructor realizes they need to modify the routine.
Conclusion? Even if our middle-aged versions of things are a bit different, they are valid and they work! Join up or not, but never, never, never give up!
Founder of Sandpoint Onstage, Teresa Pesce is dedicated to supporting and promoting everyone in our community with theatrical gifts, whose age is irrelevant and whose only “weight” is the impact of their art.
