Today I will tackle that ever so American phenomenon, the exercise class. I have been "Workin on my fitness" lately, to quote Fergie, and in so doing, have been taking an exercise class named, weirdly enough, "Body Pump".
Now, body pump, for the uninitiated, is basically weight lifting set to really loud, oftentimes a tad obnoxious music, with someone yelling at you to go slower/faster/harder/longer which makes the weight lifting itself harder/more annoying/less thought provoking. Some days I like it more than others. The instructors vary, and this, my friends is where it gets interesting. I am a people watcher, and they are really the only ones to watch while you're a captive audience sweating away the delicious pastrami you ate for lunch. There are quite a few varieties when it comes to exercise instructors. There is the Former Cheerleader ( think "Ready, OK! More SQUATS!!"), the Real Weightlifter ("Make sure you use your heaviest weight for this set now..."), the I'm Really a Kindergarten Teacher but I Needed a Job, ("OK guys! Today we're going to really do our BEST!"), the I'm Too Old For This But Have No Other Skill Set ( OK. Now we're moving on to lunges... sigh..."), the I Love Fitness and You Should TOO! ( "Don't you just love CRUNCHES!!??') and... you get the picture. However, it was not until yesterday that I encountered the ever so entertaining Complete Whack job variety.
Equal Parts Drill Sergeant , Evangelical Preacher, and Crackhead, this woman was quite a specimen. Relatively muscular, and slightly androgynous, she was a middle aged black lady with a somewhat fanatical gleam in her eye. I originally thought she was the aforementioned I Love Fitness and You Should TOO! variety, but no. I was in for a treat. As we began our dead lifts to slightly slowed down CASCADA, I began to notice some things. First, I noticed that she wasn't so much speaking into the microphone (duh, they have a microphone so they can be heard over the rhythmic beats of the fantastic tunes) as she was screaming at it. Screaming in such a way as to make her words less clear instead of more clear. Oh well I thought, maybe she's new. Right about then is when I began to notice the facial expressions, and the head bobbing and the strangely improper weightlifting form. Like some sort of bobble head turtle person, our lovely lady lead us through all of the regular stuff all the while shouting unintelligible things at us through her headset. She had a lot of head and shoulder movement going on all the time. Like, sort of a shrug, head bob, head bob, shrug combo. Like she was exaggerating her movements for teaching purposes, but forgot what she was trying to convey. I caught more than one fellow class attendee uneasily sliding their eyes left and right to see if they were the only ones thinking this lady was completely cracked. I didn't completely lose it, however, until the bicep curls. It was one of those moments where the laughter bubbling up from within my sarcastic inappropriate soul was completely, well, inappropriate. She was getting louder and louder, and she was bobbing, and curling, and shrugging and bobbing, and any minute I expected her to say either "Hallelujah!!" or " Drop and Give me 20!" or even to perhaps coo like the pigeon she was apparently imitating. After said curls, I actually left the room to collect myself. There is sometimes only one cure for inappropriate laughter - and that is to go laugh manically in the ladies locker room. After that, we did our requisite stretching and she did some more bobbing and I hastened away to consider why I attend this class, and how I am going to make all of that pie for Thanksgiving...
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