Features

When I was told that my next article was reviewing various forms of exercise, visions of sweat, short shorts and Powerade flashed before my eyes, quickly followed by the burning question: why? Or more specifically, why me? “It’s like Bridget Jones,” said the editor, “Bridget Jones does sport.”
 
If you are of the sporting persuasion, keep reading only if you get sadistic pleasure out of hearing about unfit people suffer. If you, like me, are the type of person whose flatmates have genuine concern for their health when they announce they’re going for a run, then read on to find out what would happen if you were to join the ranks of those who undertake regular physical exertion.
 
The first trick is to turn up. This may sound easy, but it is even easier to not do when faced with the temptation of the wide array of sedentary pursuits on offer or the realisation that you forgot to put your socks (or, at a stretch, your hairdryer) in your gym bag. If you can overcome these obstacles, the peer pressure of your fellow exercisers and the authoritarian nature of your instructor will do the rest.
 
So I turned up to Moana Pool for Aqua Zumba ($5.60 for students). Not content at merely pointing out that this is the usual Latin cardio dance class, with the addition of a swimming pool, the poster describes this class as the “Zumba pool party”. Now, I don’t know what pool parties you go to, but my version of a party does not involve ten or fifteen women trying to caper around in sync while onlookers, mostly of the male and speedo-clad variety, stop to watch and smirk on their way past. Aqua Zumba also achieved the impressive feat of being the only exercise I’ve ever experienced in which I was consistently cold (and I once played football in a Wisconsin winter). As much as it saddened me to admit it, the aqua is the problem in Aqua Zumba. The official line is that it provides more resistance, but as each dance move slowly propelled me floundering across our closed-off portion of the pool, I couldn’t help thinking this would work a lot better without the water. Which is of course what non-aqua Zumba is for.
 
For my next two classes I headed to Les Mills (classes are free with membership, $20 without membership, but if you ask around, an awful lot of people seem to have free guest passes or special deals). BodyPump is a cross between aerobics and weight lifting. Typical of exercise classes, this combination allows something like weight training, which usually requires training and specialisation, to be jazzed up and dumbed down. The result is a funner, easier version of the original. Although not that easy. I opted for lower weights on my bar, something I was thankful for after five minutes of lifting it up and down above my head. However it is a little demoralising when a woman twice your age and half your size is carrying out the same actions with 10kgs to your 2kgs.
 
The other highlight of exercise classes, I learnt during Pump, is instructors. These people are like the voice of reason in your head, but a lot more toned. I began to speculate how productive I would become in all areas of life if I had that constant voice, not unlike that of an unrelenting auctioneer, booming: “Okay, this going to hurt, this is going to be hard. But you are going to make it. Push yourself. Push. Push. Push harder. You can do it.” Even better was when the instructor became inspired by the music we were pumping to. “Yes, we are on the edge of glory and I’m hanging on that moment with you.” He ended with insight above and beyond the duty of a gym instructor, commenting philosophically during the warm-down to Beyoncé’s ‘If I Were a Boy’, “you know, it’s not always the man’s fault.”
 
But if it is, you can always head to Impact Boxing, which I would highly recommend to anyone who bears any resentment towards an annoying flatmate, an ex-girlfriend/boyfriend or any bureaucratic body of their choice (my personal pick is IRD). After an hour and a half of punching a bag in different combinations of left hand, right hand, hook and jab, you will feel all tension in your life boxed away. The crunches, sit-ups and press ups done at regular intervals in between did, at times, give me the impression that I was about to die, but the upside is that once back at the punching bag, you get regular breaks taking turns to hold the bag for your partner when it is their turn to punch. This part gets oddly intimate with the strange impression that you are in some way connected by a hug to your partner while they simultaneously punch you. One of my partners had the encouraging tendency to tell me “keep going, you can do, pace yourself, just thirty more seconds”, which was fantastic, but left me a little confused as to whether I was to repeat the motivational speech back to her when it was her turn.
 
I needed something as a counterpoint to group exercise. While gyms and pools are one of the glories of modern civilisation, the most primordial form of physical activity has got to be running. I had not run since my glory days of coming third in cross country at the age of ten, so I was interested to see whether my body was still physically capable of this eleven years later. Two experienced runners, one of whom claimed to me that he “likes running better than orgasms”, allowed me to trail them on a 45 minute run through the Botanic Gardens and back to Clubs and Socs to the haven of the free and very highly pressurised showers. Running is considerably cheaper than exercise classes and does not require you to go anywhere special (well it does, but the going somewhere is the exercise), however if you are not an experienced runner I would convince someone who is to accompany you in order to make sure you are well aware of the difference between running and walking and to ensure you don’t lapse into the latter. This is particularly important in terms of hills, which I personally find I cannot run up unless chased, so make sure you find someone who has a predatory streak.
 
The anticipation of the next class had me waking up, literally, in the middle of the night with a sense of imminent doom. Whenever I spoke to anyone who had encountered Bikram yoga they gave me a look of intense pity and told me stories of dehydration, fainting, vomiting and general torture. Before the class I refrained from eating for two hours, sculled two bottles of water and said a last goodbye to my friends and family. If I was going down, I was taking Critic’s editor with me, so we agreed to meet outside the Bikram yoga studios on St Andrew’s St. This didn’t get off to a good start when each of us failed to recognize the other in sports attire. We eventually were united, paid for our class (causal classes are $20, but $10 on a Sunday evening) and, gulping, drew back the door to the 40 degree room. With windows to the corridor outside and mirrors against the opposite wall so that you could watch yourself looking progressively more like a beetroot, the room was a little like the goldfish bowl from hell.
 
There seems to be some controversy in the yoga and fitness worlds as to whether practicing yoga at 20 degrees hotter than usual (or 30 degrees if you live in Dunedin) is really a great idea. Once I had accepted the fact that my hard-earned body fluids would stream out of every inch of my skin, I found Bikram yoga more enjoyable than normal yoga. I am an impatient soul and Bikram yoga poses are held for a much shorter amount of time than in regular yoga classes. It also had the added benefit of an almost naked instructor whose instructions were a lot more vigorous than the average chilled out yogi. However, I was not such a fan of his advice that “if it hurts, do it more”, nor his refusal to allow one girl to leave. People are allowed to lie down and take a break if it all gets too much and the second half was interspersed with regular and much needed rests (or savasana to use the Yogi lingo). Far from throwing up or fainting, I was surprisingly upbeat after class, even managing to down a beer and run half the way home and Bikram yoga was the only exercise tried that didn’t leave my muscles sore the next day.
 
Not so for pole dancing, by far the hardest class undertaken. A beginner’s class at Vertical Aerial Class Studio costs $20, well worth it if you are looking for a cool party trick or an intense amount of pain. Anyone with a background in gymnastics or acrobatics is at a distinct advantage, but alas I have neither and, as I quickly learnt, my childhood jungle gym abilities are long behind me. As well as the sheer strength required to lift your body even a few centimetres off the ground with your arms at a sideways angle, you also need a distinct lack of fear. You might fall and it might hurt, but if you bear this in mind you don’t stand a chance of getting off the ground and just bang ungracefully into the pole, a position I became painfully acquainted with. Contrary to what you might think, learning the technique of the art lacked any sexual element, that is, until the instructor told my friend, “I want to see your box.” And she wasn’t talking about the punching bag kind.
 
Despite nursing some nasty bruises and sore muscles, Critic’s exercise regime has managed to convince me that exercise is not all bad. It’s a bit like S&M: it may hurt, but you just keep wanting to go back for more.