How to Make Yourself Look Incompetent, or Mentally Ill

or

Attending the Biweekly Hip Hop Dance Class at My Gym

I was standing at the far end of the room, watching him in the mirror, trying to get my body to relax. This is not ballet, Danielle. This is not ballet or even jazz. This is hip hop, loosen up. But the body wouldn't listen and it seemed it was in cahoots with my brain. I simply couldn't remember the steps. Sure, he had only shown us once or twice and really fast at that, but everyone else had remembered them and was doing them no problem. For a few minutes I thought maybe I was getting old. This was it. The ol' physical fitness was already down the drain at 25. Well, that's what you get for not taking care of yourself. You can't just neglect your body for 5 or 6 years and then expect to jump right back into it with all the facilities still up to par. 

And then I thought maybe it wasn't just my body. Perhaps it was simply a lack of training. We simply don't memorize in the West like they do here. All these women have been memorizing things their entire lives. All of their schooling is based on tests which can only be passed using rote memory! I mean, instead of being able to sound out words, my principal keeps asking me if it wouldn't sound better if they just memorized the books. I mean, sure, it might sound natural, but it wouldn't mean they could read. So maybe I was really just mentally deficient in my memorization skills. So, I tried to stop using my brain so much. Feel the movement. Ignore the way this particular combination scrunches your back fat like that. Feel the way your feet should go, stop watching everyone else, watch yourself. Feel the dance, feel the rhythm. I was giving myself the Patrick Swayze Dirty Dancing pep talk and it was getting ridiculous. It wasn't helping. I flailed and attempted to hip hop my way through the hour. 

After class, all the ladies retired to the gym locker room. 

Nice Girl 1 began undressing, pulling her shirt off and discarding her bra into her locker. 

"How did you like the class?" she asked in English so beautiful it made me want to hug her, bra or no. 

"It was fun, but I feel like a total loser. I can't remember any of the moves!"

"No! You can dance," she assured me as her pants dropped to the floor. "I saw you!"

"Oh no. Please don't look at me. It's bad enough that I have to look at me in that mirror."

Nice Girl 2 turned her perky bare breasts in my direction, jealousy brimming over before I could make my eyes find her face: "We come on Tuesdays."

"I'm sorry?" 

"Almost all of us come on Tuesdays."

Nice Girl 1 was completely naked by this point. She grabbed her shower towel and said, "Yes, it's the same dance. So, maybe you will do better if you come on Tuesdays, too."

"It's the same dance?" I was so relieved! I wasn't an absolute moron with an inferior Western memory! I was a normal girl who did her best to look as exposed as possible* in her large sports bra and panties the size of both Nice Girls. 

"See you next week!" Nice Girl 1 walked into the shower room and I told myself that next time, I would take all my clothes off. 

Tonight, we did parts of the same dance over again. And we learned some new stuff. And I was decent. I still made the most mistakes of anyone, but heck, it was fun and I burned an hour's worth of calories. My nudity was up to everything but the panties this time in the locker room, so that was an improvement. The thing is, I don't shower there, so there's really no reason for me to get naked. I live right down the street and that way I don't have to haul shower stuff to the gym and back. But next time, I might just!

*Have you ever stood with someone or several persons, all undressing? It feels weird to be dressed. It's better to be half-dressed or even to pretend you're in the process of undressing than to be fully clothed while naked Korean goddesses stand around and chat. Weird how wearing clothes can make you more uncomfortable than not wearing clothes. Naked together is better than clothed alone! 

Poor, Poor Jamaica Fitness

I just want everyone to know that the gym down the street is going to cry itself to sleep like a little girl tonight because I KICKED ITS ASS. 

Super Duper Vibrations

Last night Kenny and I went to the gym for the first time in months. We had frozen our accounts with about a month and a half left on them because neither of us had the time to go. So we reopened them this week and last night, people, I KILLED IT.

I rode the bike for 20 minutes to start with. I had a killer playlist. Bohemian Rhapsody took me over a few hills; Kanye West helped me keep up a decent pace; Bruce Springsteen made my thighs burn; and a little Mamma Mia soundtrack helped me cool it down just to list a few. I was sweating and trying not to look at all the Korean girls walking nonchalantly on treadmills and stretching their thin limbs in the mirrors.

Then, I hit the weights. My dress requires stunning shoulders and I have banned back chub completely, so I did a load of different free weights and alternated with weight machines. I tried to work every opposite muscle (so like, if I did my sets of triceps, next I did my biceps) and I did 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps. And I was already sore when I stopped to drink some water out of the little entirely unsatisfying paper bags (I should take a picture). Then I went to hang upside down (does wonders for your back when you lay on a bench and hook a bar over your feet and then it goes horizontal as you push a button and you can flip almost completely and utterly upside down). After that, I stretched and I could already feel my arms tightening up. So, I took a chance and got on this machine.

Yes, I got on the fat jiggling machine. And it does jiggle your fat. Without a doubt. But I'll tell you what else this bad boy does: it shakes all the soreness out of your muscles and prepares you for the next day's workout. I have never bypassed the "next day soreness" before. But seriously, today, my right tricep aches a little right over my elbow, and of course I'm hyper-aware of all the muscles in my upper body today, but seriously, I'm good. For my arms, I used this position.


Now, Asian people generally seem to believe that if you shake your fat, it will go away. I see the ajummas walking down by the river holding their arms out in front of them and shaking those wings with abandon. I had a Chinese flatmate in Exeter who kept me awake at 3 in the morning with some kind of clapping noise. I was so angry, but more than that curious. I knocked on her door and it turned out she had just taken a shower and was slapping her fat. Slapping her fat. She couldn't believe that I didn't slap my fat. And Kenny keeps feeling my belly and my arms saying, "It's getting mushy! When your fat gets mushy it means you're losing it!" I seriously don't feel any mushier to myself, but maybe he's more of an expert on the mushy scale. I doubt you have one of these at your gym. Unless you live in Korea. Where we also still have these:

So if you can find a machine to jiggle your fat with super fast vibrations, I suggest it as a post workout insurance against the next-day soreness! Hope everyone is having a good workout week. I'm off to the gym...