Aerobics on acid

• By Alison
• 13 January, 2010
• 19 Comments

It snowed again last night, and turned our fetid pavement slushies back into the winter wonderland that I love so much. The grimy backyard – still littered with tools and broken pots – was again smooth and pristine, the guts of the previous snowman spread about now turning into moutains for snow elves.

The kids were also delighted, and the fact that school was open as usual was only a slight disappointment to them. The renewed snow meant that they’d probably be able to play outside. The previous week’s snow had quickly turned to ice which rendered the playground too dangerous to use for the whole week.

Whether or not they’d be able to play outside in the snow today was a moot point to me. I didn’t care – so long as they were at school, and I could go to aerobics.

I don’t go to the gym for self motivated exercise anymore. I lack the self motivation part of it. So after dropping them off, I headed off to the gym for a Body Attack class. Body Attack is a class that takes aerobics, stuffs it full of crack and then lets it loose in steel capped boots. After Body Attack, you hurt. And it’s in capitals because it’s trademarked and stuff. I’d have put the trademark sign, but I can’t remember which key combo it is.

It was so snowy underfoot that I had to carry my trainers and wear boots instead as the snow was too thick to walk though in trainers with “breathable toes”. Suede boots and exercise pants are not a fashion combo in my book. (Although anyone who shops at JD sports probably begs to differ. Or to put that in terms they’d understand – “dun agree wit dat”. But I digress.) 

I wasn’t going to let a little snow take away my fitness hit.

It was still snowing as I walked there, and the carpark at the gym was completely empty. Amazingly, a few of us were there for the class. But things didn’t kick off as hoped, since the instructor was trapped in traffic and running late. (Or more correctly put – sitting late.)

She literally only lives 5 minutes away by car, and has to drive down one hill to get to the gym, but ended up sitting on the high street for over an hour. If there had been any way of pulling off and parking, she could have walked in about 10 minutes. In fact, she would have walked all the way, but had to drop her son off at school first. His school is 5 minutes away in the other direction.

After standing around for half an hour one of the staff brought down a CD with some old Attack music on it, and we decided we’d try making up our own routine. Now, despite the fact we do similar routines every week, and any of us could have probably strung together a decent facsimile of it, no-one was brave enough to pretend to be teacher, so we all started to do a simon says kind of version!

It worked pretty well. If you can call people bumping into one another as they decide to start their own next step. It’s probably lucky that only the marginally fit people had braved the weather – there were no fatties generously proportioned members present. That could have resulted in broken bones. But we were happily – and almost harmoniously – grinding away when the instructor walked in, so that was muchos brownie points for us.

But despite our quick warm up, we’ve now lost 30 minutes of our time slot, and have less than half an hour before the next class. I looked up what kind of class it was and suggested that since it was the “primetime” line dancing class, maybe they’d actually all be safely ensconced in their safe warm homes, rather than tramping down the snow.

The instructor decided to get through the 1 hour class as fast as humanly possible, running over into the next class if they happened to be late or cancelled, so what followed was the most deathdefying routine of aerobics ever undertaken in the history of all aerobics. (But not including competition aerobics, because to be honest, that’s a bit insane before it begins, and I’ve actually seen people land in the splits! What’s what THAT!? Oh wait, I just watched it once, by accident. Honest.)

I already described Body Attack as being normal aerobics on crack, but today – with no rests in between, and a few jumps to the next track without even finishing the first – that made it aerobics on crack with an acid chaser and 7 cans of red bull.

Ah, Red Bull. Mmmm. Sorry, I was just having clubbing flashbacks.

As we lay quivering on the floor at the end of 45 minutes – 15 minutes eating into the line dancers’ hour – we heard something akin to an elephant at the door.

Despite what I’d suggested, nothing was stopping the suburb’s pensioner set from their line dancing. Come hell or high water – or in this case neither, the intrepid grey army had donned their extra waterproof support hose, supergrip house slippers and turned out in force. They were now attempting to jemmy the door open with their one size fits all handbags.

We bid a fast retreat out the back door as the piles of weights and dumbells started to topple.

As I stepped outside the gym the snow was still falling and the the world was still white and clean. Almost. The main road was gridlocked with cars which were sailing along in a sea of dirty slush. But once over that it was back to white. 

Having lived through a class that was close to being on drugs, I was in need of my next favourite drug.

Oh yes, it’s coffee time!