tyler's take

Swimming is a great workout and I do it almost every day, but sometimes it helps to round out the training by adding in some exercises performed outside of the pool. For the past 7 months or so I’ve been trying to get in at least three “dry-land” sessions a week, which for me has consisted of various combinations of a 30 minute “core” class, emphasizing balance while strengthening everything between the hips and the base of the neck, a 60 minute “FIT” class, which is similar to core, but includes the extremities and adds weights and stretchy bands, and a 60 minute yoga/pilates class where the yoga leans more towards a stretchy balanced mind/body experience while the pilates works primarily the lower core and hip flexors.

My most available exercise time is typically in the early morning and early evening, and since I swim most mornings the dry-land training usually ends up as an evening affair. Throughout the weekday evenings I can select one class to do, and occasionally two classes line up well enough to get them both in at the same time. The exception is Saturday morning when everything lines up perfectly for me to start with core, work into FIT and then finish with a nice stretchy yoga/pilates experience. Altogether that’s 2.5 hours of dryland (and usually I’ve also already done 1.5 hours at the pool!). To those who might be tempted to assert that 4 hours of exercise before noon on a weekend is borderline obscene (or insane (or inane)) I offer these defenses: 1) it never seems like 4 hours to me, 2) I spend most of my weekday working hours sitting in a chair. The fact that it never seems like a long time to me is probably the most important. When I sometimes see one of my classmates glancing at the clock and returning with a facial expression that reads “I can’t believe there’s still 10 minutes left!” I often find myself following their eyes to clock, yet returning with the thought “I can’t believe there’s only 10 minutes left!” The time really does seem to fly right by, which I think indicates that I must be enjoying my workout.

Over the weekend I did my last dry-land workout before short-course masters nationals, which start in 10 days. There’s always some kind of music playing during classes at the gym and it’s down to the class instructor to set the mix. Most instructors seem to have a fairly consistent mix that works well for them, but some can get a bit creative. The theme this past Saturday morning was rockin’ 80s (and even though “More than a Feeling” is a clear 70s tune I’m sure it had a lot of radio play in the 80s .

Now, I don’t know if it was my singing along (quietly) to songs that I hadn’t heard in ages, or the fact that I was going super-easy before nationals and using the lightest stretchy band and doing bench press with ridiculously light 5 lb dumbbells, or maybe a combination of the two, but for most of the class I found myself smiling (and sometimes laughing out loud (it’s fairly loud in there so I doubt many people noticed)). I was doing my best to keep my mirth somewhat in check because I understand how other people working their tails off might find that kind of behavior a little annoying (although speaking of what other people might find annoying, I can say that at least I had showered already that morning …). Then, in the middle of a particularly challenging balance exercise I heard the instructor offer this pearl of wisdom, which I shall paraphrase thusly: “If your body is shaking that just means that you’re getting in a lot of good work, and if you fall over then that just means you’re pushing yourself to your limit. But either way, don’t forget to smile because smiling while you challenge yourself is the most advanced maneuver you can do!” I really like that. And by the end of class I was feeling very advanced indeed.

The cycling “spin studio” is a half flight of stairs up from “fitness studio 2″ on the other side of a fully glass door and window. The previous saturday at the very start of the core class I looked over through the glass door and saw my friend Heather standing on the other side pointing at me through the glass and laughing (apparently she had just finished a spin class and was pausing on her way down the stairs to enjoy some free entertainment). I suppose I can’t really fault her for giggling because at the very moment the entire class was doing a warmup routine that involved variations on lower-body lunging combined with upper-body manipulation of a weighted ball. Since equipment is often scarce for the core class (owing to a larger class in the next-door studio typically hoarding most of it) I was not, in fact, holding a weighted ball, but instead a large, plastic coated, perfectly pink dumbbell. I can imagine how (to the untrained eye) the whole scene might have seemed a bit surreal and more than mildly humorous. After a few more giggles, and a clear denial of my best mimed attempt to have her join us for the fun, she disappeared down the steps and out of sight. I admit that after providing her with some comic relief I was a bit disappointed that she didn’t want to play for even a few minutes, and by “a few” I mean about five, which is nearly exactly how many minutes elapsed before her would-have-been exit strategy entered the room in the form of a hand-held white board with her name on it, attempting to summon her away to the child care center below (or more properly “the VIP center,” as I learned that day). Oh well. She made up for skipping out on a good workout just to care for her family (she’s clearly not cut out to be a triathlete) when she replied to the email I sent her inquiring about all the laughing:

“I wasn’t laughing! OK…I was laughing a little because you had the biggest smile on your face while you were doing the class! Everyone else looked like they were in pain!”

That’s OK Heather, I was laughing at myself too. And now I realize that I’ve been doing the most advanced maneuver longer than I knew.

Todd thought it was way past time for an update … several months ago.

Seemingly.