Post #23

“Right here is a good place to find your focus for class.  We’re here for ninety seconds.”

I’m being urged to find that mental space between “you can do this” and “sweet tea, just kill me” by a woman in outstanding shape.  She has a soothing voice and a wireless headset.  For the next 55 minutes, she is going to execute some of the most complicated stretching and positioning techniques I've seen in my life. She is going to do these things with an ease that startles and confounds me.  Physically, my body does not believe that the words coming out of this woman’s mouth correspond to actions that it is capable of.  So I kind of laugh. Ninety seconds?  She may as well have said two weeks.

I am the one man in a room of seventeen to twenty women.  They’re here for the same reason I am: to get into better shape.  Outwardly, the place looks nothing like a gym.  You don’t hear weights clanging together.  You don’t hear the pounding of feet on treadmills.  You don’t hear the E! Network from an idle elliptical machine.  But inside?  Inside, this place will teach you more about being strong than any gym I’ve ever been to or seen.  All you hear is that soothing voice and the pulse of dance music and the sound of twenty people trying their hardest, their absolute hardest, to just be better.  To just hold this position for two more changes.  To just be here for ninety seconds.  To pulse for just ten more.  To just get that knee up like it’s on a shelf.  In a room with only minimal weight, there exists a physical strength I have never seen or experienced in my life.

“Great form in the room right now.  And breathe.”

It’s remarkable how often I hear this, and how often I catch myself holding my breath.  This woman with the soothing voice and the headset is trying to coax something out of my muscles that I didn’t know I had. She is negotiating with a brain that doesn’t believe its body can do what it’s being told.  Oh, but dear God, after class?  That burn in my legs and back and stomach tell me that those muscles are, in fact, very fucking real and the pride and the positive mental attitude I feel tells me that, yes, my body can do what it’s told.

I knew it wouldn’t happen overnight, and I wasn’t expecting it to.  Immediacy wasn’t (and isn’t) what I’m after.  I think that’s true for a lot of the people in the room.  They understand that this is a long process that builds slowly but steadily.  I’ve tried running; it hurt my shins and knees.  I’ve tried lifting weights; I got bulky and didn’t fit into my own skin.  I’ve tried yoga; I discovered I was allergic to douchebags.  Now I’ve tried Pure Barre; I find that I like it very much and it suits my nature.

I’m a guy, and except for a Y chromosome here or there, that puts me squarely in the minority.  But that drives me, too, because I feel like I can’t let down my "team."  It also drives me because it forces me to think differently about bodies and body types and what each person’s instrument was meant to do.  It drives me because it shows me that what I thought of as “strong” was only the narrowest definition.  It drives me because I’ve been humbled three different times now by those who have had to live their whole lives under the designation of the “weaker sex.”  While the physical results haven’t manifested themselves yet like I know they eventually will, the mental changes have already started.  I feel better.  I sleep more soundly.  I look at myself more positively.  I don’t need to repeat the benefits of exercise for a person’s mental state here, but this feels different.  It feels…better.

I’m thinking about all of this while I cinch my elbows to my sides and take the arch out of my back and plank for all I’m worth.  There are attractive women here with pretty smiles, after all, and I don't want to look weak in front of them (my male ego will subjugate itself enough to come to Pure Barre, but the sucker never goes away totally, sorry).  The soothing voice from the headset is back again:

“If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.”

Damn right.  Ninety seconds?  Now I take that as a challenge.  I’ll be here for way longer than that.