A Swift Kick to the Rear

Day 2

I arrive for my class about 5 minutes early. The gym owner P is the instructor of this class and he leads me to the mats and heads into the equipment cage to procure some hand wraps and gloves for me. Once he has wrapped my wrists and fingers properly he tells me to get busy jumping rope.

The only other person in the gym says hello and tells me his name is Ernie as I set up next to him. Together we jump, taking breaks when we start getting winded or are uncoordinated enough to whack ourselves in our shins. Ernie looks like a bouncer, but is clearly not really into the cardio portion of the class. Occasionally P sees we are being lax in our jumping and yells over to us to get moving. Then P tells us to lift our knees while we jump. This leads to more shin whacking and less jumping until the instructor tells us to stop. Next up is bag work.

Ernie moves easily to his bag and starts pounding away. P takes me to one of the lighter bags, explaining that I should stick to them until I am used to hitting. He shows me how to perform a jab and a roundhouse. He corrects my stance, and reminds me to pivot and then leaves me to it. I pound away on the bag for a bit, finding it difficult to keep my feet staggered since I am so used to lining them up for proper form. (A remnant from some personal weight training sessions.) I think I am doing pretty well. Until P comes over to tell me I hit like a girl. Not just a girl, a girl who is patting a puppy instead of beating up a heavy bag. Oh, and I am dropping my shoulder and lifting my chin and basically begging to be knocked out.

While I am doing a dismal job on the heavy bag, another participant comes in a bit late. Lisa is older than I am but she looks like she could give Laura Croft a run for her money. I am clearly out of shape compared to everyone else I the room, but I forge on. 40 minutes go by and I punch, kick and move at the bag and back and forth across the room. While I am doing this, Ernie and Lisa are practicing most of the same moves I am, only on each other instead of a heavy bag. I am glad I am not taking their shots.

When we have about 15 minutes left we start working on “conditioning”. We run around the mats, do squats and ab work. While we are doing this P is doing his best drill instructor impression, yelling at us to do more, faster and better. I am pretty winded and any effort to slow down is met with resistance. I start to wonder if I am too out of shape to survive this class. Then it ends and I am mercifully released and go home.

Ten minutes later I am lying on my couch contemplating the need for lunch. My stomach is growling but I am unsure I have the muscular power left to navigate the 15 feet to my kitchen without collapsing. Instead of making me feel like I could kick ass, so far this experiment is making me pretty sure that my preschooler could take me down. It takes about 2 hours before I feel like I have arms and legs instead of pasta noodles attached at my hips and arms.