Unnatural acts

Herta

     I have long regarded exercise as an unnatural act. Walking is a normal human activity, but calisthenics?  Running?   I mean really, why should I choose, on purpose, to make my body think that a saber-toothed tiger is chasing me?  That can't be good.

41 machines in one room

      On the other hand, it's dismaying not to be able  carry the grandbabies around as much as I would like, or to be sore for days after 15 minutes of gardening. So last summer when my walking buddy Sheila proposed that I join her cardio and strength training class at the local gym, I agreed.
     We meet twice a week under the direction a our trainer Herta, who has heard all the jokes about her name.
      We start out in the cardio room. I was stunned to distraction  the first time I walked into the big, windowless  room.  There is a row of exercise bicycles and rowing machines, behind that a row of treadmills, behind that a row of things you step on , behind that a row of Nordic tracks, all facing the 5 televisions on the front wall.  Off to the side are contraptions that look like jungle gyms.  At 4 clock in the afternoon, there are purposeful, sweating  people pumping away on all the machines. Most of them are watching the TVs. Somehow they are able to ignore everybody else and concentrate.

How do I work this?

Equipment

     After we  warm up in the cardio room, we proceed into a training room full of weights and benches,  kettle bells and fitness balls and ropes and pulleys.  Herta plans sequences of exercises for triceps, biceps, core, quads, (oh, the vocabulary!), usually two minutes at a time.  Somehow she gets us going and keeps us going.  I call on my 1950s Catholic school training:  there is no individual option. You just do what the group does, and you believe.  Herta is spare with praise and encouragement, so last week when she cheered my progress to 7.5 -lb hand weights, ("No more 5s for Maggie!")  it was sweet.
     I no longer get confused in the cardio room.   I step onto the treadmill, the one machine I know how to work, and zone into my own little TV-watching bubble.  Then I hurry into the training room and  do whatever Herta tell us to.
  I've changed my mind about exercise.  When I see the old men  joking each other along on the machines, or the kids with Down syndrome in their karate uniforms, or the guy recovering from a stroke, or myself getting stronger, I think we are engaged in noble work.   We are all hoping to stay upright for a long, long time.