Back in the Cupboard of Failed Fitness

So on Tuesday I got back on the fitness train. Actually, I don’t think we can call it a train just yet. At best it’s one of those see-saw devices you see in silent movies, operated by two hapless ruffians with four teeth between them. In this case the Two Hapless Ruffians will be played by me and Leonie of Leek, because in a wave of pro-active can-do-ness she shared with me her online gym membership as we whipped ourselves up into a fervent state of YEAH LET’S DO IT!!! which, as everyone knows, is Stage One of any renewed attempt at fitness / dieting / changing your entire personality. It’s just so much better when you know someone else is out there kicking with the wrong leg while you both attempt something diabolical called Body Combat.

So it was that at 10am on Tuesday I dragged a yoga mat from the jaws of the Cupboard of Failed Fitness, then rugby tackled the Yellow Chair into the “Kitchen” so I would have just enough room to kick without breaking a window, or my leg.

Let’s remember - or allow me to confirm at least - that my physical activity during lockdown is best categorised as Absolutely Nothing No I’m Serious Nothing Whatsoever. Since the end of confinement it has extended to Absolutely Nothing No I’m Serious Nothing Whatsoever Except The Odd Electric Bike Ride. Note the specificity of Electric Bikes there. Those are the bikes that speed off at 10mph at the merest suggestion of downward pressure on a pedal - the runaway horses of the urban world. I estimate that these rides average 1.3 calories burned per hour cycled, and nowhere in Paris is further than 20 minutes. In conclusion, I have done nothing by way of meaningful exercise since perhaps the first week of March. 

Consequently I was genuinely concerned that at the first attempt at what I believe they call a  “Roundhouse Kick” my leg would fly off at the hip and over the balcony, landing - aptly - in the gigantic bins below. I had told myself - throughout lockdown and most convincingly - that I couldn’t possibly work out in this tiny, tiny place. I couldn’t even unroll a yoga mat in here! I protested vehemently, waving my arms every time the Little Voices chastised me for my profound inertia. 

On Tuesday though, once the Yellow Chair had been shoved into the kitchen, I stepped back and considered the space available to me and I said, Huh!

Translated into actual words: Well would you look at that! with a dash of Who would’ve thought it? In reply, I heard all the Little Voices smack their palms to their foreheads. Turns out I absolutely could have emerged from lockdown with wrist-sized upper arms, a gravity-defying bum and a stomach flatter than the proverbial pancake but since that would have required me to be A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON I think the addition of say, half a stone and the abandonment of my entire wardrobe (thank god for those two pairs of dungarees amiright?!) was just inevitable, space or no space. 

Of course once I’d moved the yellow chair and said huh! and dug out my ancient-yet-barely-used sports bra from the dusty recesses of the Third Drawer Down (reserved exclusively for half-forgotten things), I had to follow through, and I was very nervous about it. I knew that very soon all these people with head-sets and shining muscles, these paragons of humanity, would be exhorting me to do things that I was no longer sure I could do. Like jump. 

We opted for the aforementioned Body Combat, because I have always enjoyed pretending to punch and kick things and should probably interrogate that more closely at some point. I didn’t just dive straight in to the Combat with my Body bit, though. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I’m no idiot. I wasn’t about to start flinging my limbs around, only to be rewarded by a symphony of snapping tendons and percussive bone-breaking. No - I did the sensible thing and watched the introductory videos. I watched them like my life depended on it because it probably did: I kicked low and without conviction, and I punched with the modest goal of not dislocating my shoulders.

After that though came the actual work. I didn’t want to do it. Story of my life really. If it weren’t for the thought of Leonie-of-Leek in her Lounge-in-Leek gamely kicking and punching away, I might have sat down at that point and called it a valiantly pathetic start. Instead I spent 16 minutes (yep, 16 measly minutes) mimicking the punching people in my phone screen like a woman possessed, a muddle of confusion and desperation on my purpling face, forgetting everything I was supposed to know and, in the end, flailing my limbs like a champ. 

All I can say is, it ended. That was the best bit. 

Afterwards though, I emerged into a new reality - one in which I hadn’t not exercised for four months. I crossed over. I liked it there. It felt better: it had promise. From that first step I could go anywhere at all - I wouldn’t, and I won’t, but I could. Suddenly I was able to imagine things that had been inconceivable just 16 minutes earlier. 

Now I’ll admit that when I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t move my arms. I could barely hoist myself out of bed and I couldn’t fully extend my elbows without gritting my teeth first. But I wore my winces with pride. Here was pain I hadn’t felt in months - the pain of trying. The first time I did a bootcamp class all those many moons ago I couldn’t move for a week. A full, solid, no-joke week. I remember coming down the stairs at work and laughing, laughing at the agony of it. I would claw my way up off the toilet because my thighs had been turned into stone wrapped in pain. And I’m right back there again. But it did get better, in those misty mists of a Fitter Time. Before lockdown began I had, for the first time in my lethargic existence, gotten to the stage where I could do an hour of frenetic cardio and not feel a flicker of it the next morning. I tried to do that three times a week. Even putting that down seems impossible to me - who the hell was She? Where has she gone? Can we get her back? What I particularly liked about her was that she cared less about the numbers, and more about the fact that she could finally do plank for a full minute without reaching 7.4 on the Richter Scale. That’s what I really loved and miss about the fitness train - it started out - doesn’t it always? - being about weight, and then it was just about the incomparable joy of Feeling Strong. 

So if this train is, at present, more of a rickety platform with wheels so rusty we’re not even sure they’ll turn yet, then fine. The journey of a thousand miles can start with a low and feeble roundhouse kick.