Gahee and Jenny Meet Pilates

It's all Rose's fault.  She's another instructor at the community college where I teach and she mentioned that her roommate signed them both up for Free 2 Be Fit classes at a local church.  Turns out the church is very close to where we live, so I mentioned this to Gahee.  This past Monday we attended our first pilates class.....and it hurt!   It was fun, though.

We received a friendly greeting and were asked if we had ever attended a pilates class before. 

"No."

"Well, you'll need to take some Aleve when you get home."   I told Gahee that Aleve was a pain medicine...like ibuprophen.

The instruction was excellent, the participants had all been doing pilates for a while, and Gahee and I felt like fools.  She's young and very slim.  I'm the opposite; yet there we were both flailing our arms and legs around, trying not to laugh too loudly because everyone else was very concentrated with their efforts to move and hold arms and legs in painful positions as instructed.

About 10 minutes into the class I found myself thinking, "How much longer do we have?"

About 15 minutes into the class I found myself thinking, "Yoga doesn't hurt this much."

About 20 minutes into the class I found myself grunting, groaning, and sighing as I modified the required movements to accommodate my being so out of shape.

There were a few times when I saw myself doing movements better than Gahee.  She may be petite and young, but I did some leg circle movements better than she did.  Of course, we both watched in amazement as an older woman, who walked in with a limp when she joined the group, made leg circles and held ab poses as if she were a member of the U.S. Olympic team.  She was inspiring and intimidating.

We took pain medicine when we got home...and for the past several days I've felt some slight pain in my thigh muscles and stomach muscles.  That tells me I at least worked something other than my fat.

There are three programs to choose from:  pilates, zumba, and weight training.  Saturday morning I'll attend a zumba class.  I looked it up on YouTube....looks like fun! .... and less painful than pilates.  I'll just have to be careful with my weak right knee.  Don't know if Gahee will join me or not, but I'm going.   Also want to try out the weight training class.  I'm quite interested in that and I think Gahee might be, also.
 
And yes....I'll go back to pilates and do whatever I can manage....while wondering, "Are we almost done?"