Pontius Pilates

I met Liz today for a mid-day pilates class. In the past I've jokingly derided the class as being for girls and teased her about it. Mostly I was afraid that I'd go and be in really awful shape and embarass myself.

I went today and was surprised by a few things. 1) My "core" is pretty strong. I have decent abs. They're relatively strong and seem to do the job. 2) It's odd to have someone barking out commands for which you have literally no idea the context or meaning. I was told to suck, and tuck, and swivel, and elongate, and who knows what else. Steve the teacher was enthusiastic and kind of like a good gym teacher. Gruff, but he cared about making sure people did things right. It was nice. It also reminded me that it's the first time I've ever taken an athletic class, or dance class. I cannot make my body look like someone else's without a lot of thought. So not only was I contending with foreign words and largely foreign movements, I was fighting my basic prediliction to fuck up anything requiring rhythm and spacing. I breathed at incorrect times, I rocked up when I should have gone back. I move right instead of left. I was a man with two left feet and three right arms. It was like playing twister in a foreign language with a brutal case of AD/HD. That said, it was quite a bit of fun, and I'm sure I'll be sore tomorrow.

Part of the reason I broke down and went is the constant hectoring from Liz, but more of it is related to my goal of getting rid of my tummy. As I said, I'm really quite strong in the core. None of the sit-upish movements were hard. I can crunch like Big Foot driving through a peanut brittle factory. And yet I have this little tummy. Reminds me of what small boys have, a rounded little belly--though mine is covered in hair, which makes it exactly 100% less cute. I'm not by any objective means overweight, or out of shape, but I'm in a strange shape. I have no arms or legs or chest, and yet and semi-strong. And then I have this tummy, this silly little bulge. It's quite odd. So I'll see what pilates has to offer me in this regard. I'll bend and twist and turn and caper and maybe I'll end up with a six-pack, if not, I'm sure I'll end up amusing my classmates. Nothing so funny as a hairly gangly man trying to pose and rock and suck in his belly.