Body Pump

“Come to Body Pump with me”,  my oldest daughter said.  “You will enjoy it”, she said.  

A couple of months ago my family joined a new gym.  It is a pretty high performance gym geared to athletes and some serious fitness folks.  There are also a few people like me, just trying to maintain without pushing too hard, but we are the minority.   

“Are there any older people in the class?”, I asked.  “Yes” she said, “quite a few.”

“And it is a great program for your bone density issues”, my youngest daughter added.

So I showed up for Body Pump.  My daughter got me all set up with a bench and pad, and numerous barbells with various weights.    I looked around the class of about 25 people and I was BY FAR the oldest person there.  I said to my daughter “ I thought you said lots of older people take this class.”  She responded, “well, they were here last week.”   Great, I thought, they apparently all died after taking this.  

Class began with doing squats while holding a barbell across your shoulders. Down, up, down, up. Then down and pulse, down and pulse.  I thought I was doing pretty good until after about 600 squats the instructor yelled, “okay, second set”    What?  We have to do more?  Yes, like four sets of those.

Finally the million squats were over and we moved to shoulders.  Now we were holding plates that we raised to shoulder level, hold, then over head, back to shoulders, now rotate.  I was using light weights and was thinking “wow, this is easy, I could do this all day.”   Until after a minute or so of non-stop movement when those light plates began to feel like they were 100 pounds each.  I was sweating profusely.   Finally the instructor yelled, “okay, lunges!”

I looked at my daughter and said “I hate you.”   She just laughed

This went on for an excruciating hour, exercising each major muscle group - squats, presses, lunges, deadlifts. curls, triceps (OMG I thought those muscles were ripping off my bones)  crunches and push-ups.   I think blood was starting to come out of my pores and I was seeing cross-eyed.  After a few cool down stretches we were released from this hell and I went home and sat in a sauna, whimpering and  feeling sorry for myself.

Today I could barely get out of bed.  There is no part of my body that does not ache and for some reason I cannot go down stairs.  I think my quads have withered in fear and my legs are threatening to leave me all together.   I had trouble eating breakfast as I could barely lift the spoon to my mouth. I imagine it will be even worse tomorrow.

My youngest daughter is home on her fall break and asked me to go to a class with her on Saturday called Body Attack.

I don’t think so.    My body has already been attacked.

But I am hoping to return to the Body Pump class (after my body recovers in a year or two)  as I think it is really good for rebuilding my cancer drug bone loss.  

And then I will look like this.

Well, after I have my foobs pumped up more.