I talk about Nevada Fitness Club a lot. Actually, maybe I don't talk about it out loud. But it's kind of an ever-present background noise in my mind.
It's because precious little is more important to my Monday through Thursday routine than going to the Community Center at 6:30 and swimming out 40 to 60 minutes later in a pool of my own sweat, riding on a workout high that lasts at least an hour. Or until the fifth spoonful of peanut butter. Whichever comes first (it's the peanut butter).
It was not always this way. In fact, on January 27, 2014, when I went to my first workout, I decided five minutes into what was clearly a routine exclusively for the graceful that Combat Cardio was not for me. The instructor, a man I had previously considered a friend, spent at least 48 of the 50 minutes telling me what I was doing wrong.
"There are other people in this damn class!" I telegraphed to him furiously in my mind, but he was too busy talking about my horrible technique to read my thoughts.
But when it was over, I felt this crazy rush, and knew that air-punching my invisible enemy was the workout for me, after all.
Though the workouts varied, one thing was a constant: my location in the gym. I hugged the back corner, right in front of the door, so I could bail if necessary, and so nobody could see me labor through the moves. I'm kind of a clumsy, gawky person, and I didn't want anyone to see what I looked like trying to do hip-hop and agility drills.
As the months passed, I saw people make noticeable progress...the woman in front of me lost fifty pounds in 2014. But as far as regulars, people who were there with me at the beginning and the end of the year, it was kind of just me and that woman, whose name I still don't know. She's awesome, whoever she is.
Summer ended and the weather cooled, and as it did, attendance picked back up. I kept my spot in the back and waited for the rush of new people when we came back to class January 5, and although there were a few new faces, it wasn't as packed as I thought.
Until this week.
All week long, my spot was taken by a new attendee. Actually, the whole back row was new people. Who were these people!? Why were they in my spot?
Luckily, there was a giant, spotlighted area on the front row waiting for me. At first, this made me angry. What right did they have to stand in my spot!??!? Why did I have to go to the front!?
And then, it hit me. Those people were me a year ago. I had spent the year in the back of the gym, feeling out of my element, out of shape, out of breath. But a lot changed in the past year. I could get through the workouts now. I wasn't winded. I didn't feel like as much of an idiot.
It was time to graduate to the front of the gym.
And it wasn't that bad. Mainly because I couldn't see the people that could see me, but whatever.
Sure, I haven't made the noticeable changes that many in the class have made. Christy has lost 11 inches and 15 pounds; another girl, a runner, shattered her record for the mile since she started working out with us.
I haven't really lost any weight; I don't look that different. My physical changes are limited to the fact that, in the beginning, I spent a lot of time wheezing on the floor.
My real changes came from within. A year ago, I started to work out because I thought I needed something to fill the time while my husband was working on the road. I was accused of over-thinking things in general, and I thought a hobby would prevent that, give me something to fill up my time so my imagination didn't work overtime.
Instead, Nevada Fitness Club sharpened my focus and increased my confidence. To be fair, I had no confidence to start with, so I had nowhere to go but up, but gainz.
It enabled me to stop obsessing and attaching importance to things I could not change, and instead focus on the only thing I COULD change...myself. I'm a different person now, and I have Nevada Fitness Club to thank.
So I'm happy to give up that back-row spot if it means the others can get even a little of what I've experienced from these classes.
I just wish the light wasn't quite so spotlight-y on the front row.
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