Body Pump!

I wiggled for my wife.

It was a silly, playful wiggle I did as I was about to get in the shower. My shirt was off and I was using my body, in what I believed was a humorous manner. It certainly wasn’t meant to entice my wife in any type of arousing way. 

My tummy is not what you would describe as “traditionally handsome.” I believe when moved seductively—not seductive at current size/weight—my belly can be pretty funny. It is too; it is sitcom-funny. My wife doesn’t like sitcoms, and rule número uno in comedy is “know your audience.” 

That little joke was very not what Wendy likes. Specifically, it reminds her of the unfortunate state of my body’s shape. That leads her to question my health. Then she extrapolates the date of my death and is unsatisfied with the idea that today’s date and my dying day are too close together.

But Wendy, she is a woman of action. She believes that she controls our fate and she immediately makes her move.

So what happens in less than five seconds, as I am shimmying my imperfect frame between curtain and shower, is this: 

“Hey Wendy,” I called out playfully to my wife while simultaneously pumping my arms around my chubby torso, “whoop, whoop, WHOOP!”

Wendy glances at me and her eyes wince a little, like eyes do when they come upon something too shiny to perceive or visually unpleasant. “You’re doing Body Pump with me today.”

“Damn it.”

—

Now don’t get me wrong, I have been going to the gym, exercising, seeing my trainer regularly and there have been solid results. My trainer, Danny, explained to me that the people you see everyday have a much harder time seeing the progress you make than a person who sees you only rarely or every few months.

I have received such praise about my physique taking positive shape, from qualified individuals no less. My friend Erica, an extremely knowledgable personal trainer—who also happens to have better jump rope skills than you have ever, ever seen—specifically remarked favorably at certain positive changes in my musculature. We all acknowledge that my stomach requires extensive work, she didn’t focus on that. She thought my arms, chest and shoulders had much more definition than before. I trust her, she’s a professional.

So I have been exercising. I have been going to the gym. I have been improving (do you sense a big “but” coming here? I do). But my belly weight drew too much attention to the wrong centers of my wife’s brain. Straight past the “ha-ha” centers and right to the “he is going to die” centers. 

The verdict had come down. I was going to do this dreaded Body Pump class. It was a class that I had successfully avoided for over ten years. The reasons were simply that I thought it would be a tough class and I couldn’t hack it. Avoiding that class had nothing to do with the idea that group exercise classes are seen by some as feminine or girly. Let me squash that idea right now. I did some aerobics and dabbled in some Jazzercise in college and it was vigorous.

I have no prejudices against this type of exercising. I just know that I don’t want to do it for many reasons.

For those not familiar with the Les Mills branded workout classes, they are popular at gyms and health clubs around the country. The class I will be focused on is a high-intensity, high-rep, hour long program utilizing specialized free weights that have all been labelled with weight amounts far less than they end up weighing. I don’t fully understand how the program works but I can tell you that the weights are made out of a material that manipulates gravity over the course of the sixty-minute class. This means even the smallest weighted “doughnut” becomes almost un-liftable by the end of class. It’s remarkable really.

Wendy has been doing a version of this class for over ten years. It works. It produces visible results quicker than an 80’s movie montage where a down and out character quickly gets into shape over the music provided by the film director’s cousin’s rock band; so, ridiculously fast. 

Body Pump is the only activity that I have seen my wife do, that comes anywhere close to defeating her. You may point out to me that my wife birthed our son naturally, and that was probably harder. I would disagree. My wife was rather jovial after giving birth. She can run miles without even realizing she has. Her endurance is staggering. Body pump consistently hits Wendy hard. THAT is what scared me most.

Standing there in the shower, I began to panic a little. How would my sad little frame handle that class? “I need a plan. I need a plan. I need a plan.”

“You need a plan for what?” Wendy asked outside the door, “you aren’t getting out of this.” 

“I know,” I said, crestfallen, “I’m doing it. I’M GOING TO DO IT!”

“Hurry up,” Wendy said.

Walking through the parking lot at the gym, I felt as though my eyes were taking in everything in slow-motion. Was this to be my final hour? My brain seemed to be making all the preparations. I could feel whole systems in my body shifting and in disarray. My circulatory system began to pump, in preparation for me to flee the situation and not do the class. My nervous system, on the other hand, felt like it was just plain shutting down. I felt numb. My respiratory system switched to manual and I had to think about every breath.

I signed in at the gym and picked up a small towel to clean up the inevitable vomit I would spew just before dropping dead on the polished parquet floor of the exercise studio. 

A quick fantasy flew through my mind, imagining the scene of me dropping dead of self-imposed over-exertion. Wouldn’t Wendy feel awful if I just keeled over in class from a massive brain hemorrhage? She would. She would try to revive me with CPR, but that would just break my ribs and hurt me more. She would be told that I died of a brain hemorrhage and not the heart attack she so wrongly assumed I was having. She’d think I had a heart attack and then be shamed by the coroner’s report that my heart was probably the healthiest he had ever seen. “Wow! Was he a drummer?” The coroner would ask my wife. 

“Yes, he was,” my wife would answer surprised, “how did you know?”

“Because his heart was so strong. He must have had excellent stamina behind a drum kit. His heart could handle anything, but he must have been pushed too hard. His powerful heart put too much strain on a blood vessel in his brain. He must have been very smart.”

“Wait, how did you know that?”

“In brilliant people, the barriers in the blood vessels are thin near the brain. That’s what caused this. Ideally a person like Steve, with such a healthy heart and brilliant mind, shouldn’t have exerted himself at such heavy exercising levels. Light, infrequent movement and lots of indoor activities with snacks would have kept him alive and well for decades. Not to put too fine a point on this, Dr. Iwaszuk, but had Steve not gone to that Body Pump class, he would be alive today.”

I let the scene draw a satisfied smirk on my face as Wendy snapped me out of the dream I was using as a coping mechanism. (FYI, the coroner in my little death fantasy looked and sounded exactly like the munchkin coroner from The Wizard of Oz.)

“We are going to be late,” Wendy said as she directed me past the water fountain I was moving toward to fill my bottle, “There’s water in the room, we gotta go. Don’t get water here, we need to get setup.”

Setup for my doom.

The studio was large, rectangular, with a stage set up against one of the long, fully-mirrored walls. The polished hardwood floor was too nice to puke on. I figured if I could just get a spot behind everyone, in the back, I wouldn’t make as big a spectacle of myself when my body shuts down and I pass out in a pool of at least two, but more likely three or more of my own involuntarily evacuated bodily fluids.

Wendy pointed at the water and immediately began grabbing equipment to get setup. I grabbed equipment and followed her, thinking I would fill my bottle after setup. Wendy got us setup right up in the front row. Front. Row.

I knew I was going to have to do the class. I had accepted it, but the little plan I had made back in the shower at the house had me in the darkest corner, farthest from the stage and in absolutely nobody’s line of sight. This situation was the exact opposite. As I was setting up this fairly elaborate bunch of weights, platforms, mats and a bar, I became extremely uncomfortable with all the people around me. 

Why? Perhaps it was the fact that I knew I would struggle through the program, not keep up and fall behind, like every fat guy you have ever seen workout on TV. Go ahead, picture a fat guy working out and getting sweaty. I knew there was a possibility that I would be that guy, and the show would now be up front for all to see. 

What if I farted? Aggressive exertion of the body has been known to push a little air out of a colon. Mine is no different; accept that it is. I don’t know why, but my gas can be plentiful and rancid. Not only that, they tend to be rather loud. With practice—I will not practice this—my farting would make a suitable 2nd chair trombone replacement in most youth orchestras around the country. A sustained note from my colon would let everyone know where the terrible smell was coming from.

I stood there quietly as Wendy excitedly patted me on the back.

“Are you ready? I’m really happy you’re doing this,” she asked, more to cheer me on than anything else. 

I wasn’t happy, I was quite freaked out. I was a little panicky as My eyes darted from Wendy to around the room and then back to Wendy. “I have some concerns,” was all I could say in a low monotone through unmoving lips.

“You’ll be fine,” she said as she loaded up her bar.

I moved to do the same. Not the same weight my wife did, I’m no dummy. I went with less. This actually was part of my plan from the shower. “Steve, don’t be some macho hero and try to do the same weight as your animal wife,” I believe was my thought. I would check my meager machismo at the door. 

The weights for the Body Pump bar easily slide into one of three spaces on either end. As is tradition, both ends should hold the same weight to maintain balance. To remove the weights, just pull back on a plastic release just inside the bar. It is different from typical free weights in that they aren’t heavy, clanging plates that cane stacked out to a ridiculous level. These are smaller square-ish doughnuts of reasonable size. With the quick movements, the bar prevents the rubberized weights from falling off the bar.

For any weight-lifters out there wanting to ask the immortal weight-lifting question: “Dude, do you even lift?” My confident answer to this question is: “No.”

Judging from Wendy’s bar, I had reduced the weight to about half what she was doing, it was definitely less. Others around me had more weight, but screw those people, I wanted to live through this.

The instructor welcomed all of us through her headset microphone, waved at Wendy and a few others she knew and went right into the exercising. No fifteen minute orientation or safety talk about what to do if you experience chest pain or nauseous stomach, nothing. We were going to fill all sixty minutes with intense movement. 

I was immediately behind. I was behind the movement of the group, the timing on the song, and I was unclear at the directions coming from the instructor. I didn’t know the lingo and I was struggling to keep up. 

The weight seemed good. It was a challenge and I pushed through the last of the reps of the first go-round. I was starting to sweat and reached for my towel and empty water bottle. It was strange, because I remember thinking I was just a little thirsty toward the end of the set, but upon seeing my water bottle was empty, became thirsty like an alcoholic stranded in the middle of the ocean.

“Alright! That was the warmup,” the instructor said, “go ahead and load up those bars.”

The class all dropped to their knees to add weight to their bars. I had two problems with this: I was having trouble not dropping my bar at the end of the set because of the weight I had selected, and also, my thighs were on fire from the lunges and squats I had just done. I wouldn’t be able to get low enough to switch the weights without some kind of audible moan.

“Rowmmeeeeaghppfff,” I stifled the moan as I dropped to the ground to switch out the weights. I quickly looked to see if Wendy was monitoring my performance.  She was.

“Great, wasn’t it?” She said, energized and smiling at me, “hear we go!” She was slapping on extra weight.

I was not going to add extra weight, but I sure wasn’t going to stand there and NOT change the weight. Then Wendy would know just how much trouble my body was in. 

Because everyone was so focused on changing the weights quickly, I figured  I had a shot at pulling this off. I took the weight off the right side and then moved to the left and took those plates off. Then I went over to my pile of weights on the right side again and started picking up and putting down the plates as if I was looking for a particular size. Then I put the same plates on the right side that I had on before. I made the left side look the same.

It worked. Wendy didn’t suspect. By that time we were one rep behind and needed to hustle. I reached for a quick drink of water, but my bottle was still empty. 

This water situation was going to be a problem. I could feel my body drying up. I still had spit in my mouth, but it took awhile to conjure it up.

With the warmup done, I was at least now familiar with the different exercises we were going to do, but apparently we were going to do more of all of them, preferably with more weight than before—wink, wink.

I’m watching the instructor, who is making quick work of twice the weight on my own bar. I was trying to copy her movements as closely as possible. I wasn’t doing it very well. I know this, because Wendy caught my eye and demonstrated to me the correct way to lift the bar. It was very helpful to have two role models to follow during a class I was just trying to make it to the end of. 

“You want to keep your back straight, like this,” Wendy said, breaking formation and coming over to me. “Watch my legs. See how low I’m going? Go that low…or just go as low as you can…GOOD JOB!”

I just nodded Wendy away and focused on doing the right movements, only wrong. I wasn’t angry at that point, I just wanted one person to focus on and one person only and that was going to be the same person everyone else was getting their instructions from. I wasn’t going to go through a Body Pump clinic with my wife in the front row of a Body Pump class that was currently in session.

It was strongly suggested to me and the rest of the class that we “push it” and “keep it up.” I had a difficult time doing both, so I alternated between “pushing it” and “keeping it up.” This was only the second compromise I made for the class. There would be more, and they were progressively more shameful.

At about minute twenty-two I looked toward the doorway to see if, by chance, my son Zachary was walking by between shooting hoops and ping-pong. I thought that if he would glance in, maybe, just maybe I could motion him through the sweaty crowd swinging weighted bludgeons around to ask him to bring me a drink of water or fill my bottle. He never wandered by, and I was at a bad angle.

We started into a power-press section where we press the bar high over our heads.  This became significant because it was about that time that I noticed something I found about my workout that was truly horrifying.

In the mirror, as I was raising my bar high above my head, I noticed a tiny sliver of my belly becoming exposed as my shirt lifted over the threshold of my workout shorts. My arms came down and it disappeared. “Oh please tell me that nobody saw my tummy,” I thought to myself. 

“Really push those bars up there!” The instructor called out over the pulsing music. 

I did. I really pushed it up there and I was rewarded with the most unflattering part of my body making a peekaboo appearance at the apex of my lift. I needed to tuck that belly back into my sport shorts, correcting this problem and salvaging any dignity that I might have left.

With my weight bar at the top, I see the lower hairy half of the tiny cave that is my belly button. I bring the weight bar down hard, almost dropping it through my strained, oddly-small hands. My shirt, unfortunately after going so high on my body and coming into contact with untapped reservoirs of my sweat underneath my pecs/man boobs, decides to not make the return trip downward to cover my shameful tummy. 

I wanted to yank my shorts up over the sagging abundance of fat and flesh, to ensure future arm raises would not reveal my portly paste. But because my shirt was hung up on my sweaty body, I decided that needed to come down first, so holding the weight bar in front of me with one hand, I grabbed at my shirt and pulled down hard. While my hand was down there, I quickly released the shirt and grabbed for my shorts to pull up.

Though for a brief instant I thought I had succeeded in fixing an awkward situation, in actuality I had just made my situation worse. It only took a momentary glance in the mirror to see what I had done.

As I was again reaching the top of the rep with my press, when my belly had been at its most exposed, I saw that my shirt was tucked in…to my underpants. I had not grabbed my black shorts and pulled them up under my black shirt. No, that would have worked and been perfectly camouflaged. Instead, my light blue underpants were pulled up and over black shirt. It was a tight, wide and tapering section of blue, that in contrast to the black exercise shorts and shirt, really shined brightly under the studio lights.

Whatever laughter or giggling that there may have been was drowned out by the loud studio music or my own exasperated cry of horror.

When the weight came down, I pulled out my shirt, found my shorts and yanked them up under my shirt, which sounds like I had fixed the problem, but I had actually created another problem. For a split second, there was a suspicious bulge peaking out of the bottom of my shorts. 

Not knowing exactly what the bulge was, and not wanting to risk going to jail for exposing myself to an entire exercise class, I immediately closed my knees, while my feet were still spread out to just under my shoulders. This motion, paired with my bar above my head, made it look like I was  moving into full body collapse. I lost about 10 inches very quickly and I brought the bar down fast to grab at my crotch quickly and tug some fabric over what may have been an edgier corner piece of my slightly exposed genitals. 

My wife looked over just in time to see the end of this little dance I was having with my poorly chosen exercise outfit. She gave a quick, puzzled look, then smiled at me and mouthed, “I’m proud of you.”

The music stopped, and the instructor told us it was time to lie down on our benches and grab two plates to work our arms. I think I was the first person to be on my back. After a quick pat down to make sure all my coverin’ parts were indeed covered, I exhaled and grabbed a plate in each hand to do, what looked like, flailing exercises.

On the upside, I got to lie down. That was welcomed, but I had selected the wrong sized plates to work my arms. By wrong size, I mean too heavy. Again, I selected the weights forgetting that they got heavier. 

“By now, you should feel some burning in your arms,” the instructor said.

I had passed the burning during the warmup. My arms were in uncharted territory of fatigue. I was less concerned about the way my arms felt then and started thinking about how much worse they would feel the next day. My brain immediately shut that down. Thinking of that was too scary. 

Somehow I found myself still moving and doing the routine at minute forty. I had begun to sweat so much that my brain was scouring my body systems for extra moisture to send out to my sweat gland cooling system. I had gone into class needing to pee, but all that moisture was pulled back. So despite everything else in the class causing problems and trouble with my body, I no longer felt an urgency to urinate. My brain was making the rest of my body and organs sacrifice liquid for this terrible endeavor like the rationing and scrap metal drives of World War II. 

“If we are going to survive this exercise class, all you organs are going to have to dig deep, DEEP, I say,” an image of my brain wearing a carnival barker straw hat would call out to my gathered bodily organs. “And now is the time to show your support by purchasing sweat bonds!”

It’s hard to remember if those last thoughts were just my imagination or straight-up hallucinations while I wobbled through our next section, which worked the legs through a series of lunges and squats.

For the uninitiated, squats are simply the motions of sitting down and standing in an invisible chair without the aid of your arms to lower or raise you. Lunges could be described as a particularly long walking stride that you abandon halfway through walking and then move your body up and down in a noncommittal act of either moving forward or back. It’s a very stubborn exercise.

The hard part about the lunges for me was the balance. I would move down slowly into a lunge and then wobble to needing to abort the motion and break the stance. The problem was, every time I would lose my balance I knew I could break the lunge and rest from the burning feeling of my thighs. I was already sore from the lunges I was doing in class. I shuddered to think of what the burn would feel like the next two days.

The instructor, who was very positive and not at all judgmental of either my wardrobe malfunctions or that I kept tipping over during the lunges, had one quirk that kept me guessing and off of the routine. At random times, she would sing along with the song that was playing. Unfortunately the lines were all vague clips of the lines that could have—and were—misinterpreted as directions or cues for directions. 

“This is…” She spoke loudly into her headset mic. Then nothing. No direction, she would just keep doing the reps.

“This is what?” I asked myself. What was I missing? The movements didn’t change. “This is what?”

Then the chorus of the song comes around on its own and I here the line is: “This is, the part where I say I don’t wanna.” Which not only clicked in my head as the line the instructor sang along with, but it made me agree. I didn’t “wanna” be doing any of this.

My water bottle was still empty. 

We stopped again to switch weights and the instructor asked the group how we were doing.

“Are you starting to feel it?” She asked us enthusiastically. 

“Nauseous?” I thought, “yeah, I’m definitely feeling it. 

“WOOP! YEAH!” Wendy cheered and smiled, which, positive as it might have been, was a little off-putting to those of us—just me—unable to enunciate anything as clear as a “woop” or “yeah.”

Oh, how the sweat drained off my head. I finally “got” what sweat bands were used for. Though in my case, some kind of gutter system around my balding patch, with maybe a miniature rain barrel. All that sweating sure made me thirsty. 

“Let’s finish the track up with some push-ups!” The instructor called out.

“I’m going to die,” I may have mumbled, but I doubt it was audible. I dropped down and got into position on my numbing, wobbly arms. The following push-ups were the saddest push-ups anyone has every done. They weren’t in time with the group, they weren’t in proper form and I can’t even confidently say, my body actually left the ground.

Luckily I did not have to leave the ground for the next part. I just had to turn over on my back. It was a challenge, but after a minute of labored breathing, I was able to not only roll over, but to actually end up on part of my mat.

I had never been so thankful to do sit-ups. The core work was easy by comparison to the rest of the stuff we did. Laying on my mat and working anything but my arms and legs? Yes please.

I looked over longingly at my water bottle, still empty.

Suddenly, the music changed from pulsing, rhythmic psychological assault, to soothing synthesizers with low tones and a softer decibel level. The lights dimmed and the mood changed from go to slow.

We stretched, though admittedly I just rolled around on the floor groping uselessly for relief of my throbbing and tired muscles. I had made it. I made it. 

Wendy patted me on the back, and I attempted to move my face to a smile. I tried giving her a thumbs up, but it looked strange when I couldn’t lift my thumb.

I was dizzy. I was nauseous. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t make it home.

My body shook as I slowly shuffled to the water fountain while everyone else hurriedly raced around putting their equipment away. I filled a cup and drained it twice before we left. The water helped, but I still had a long way to go to get to the car. Wendy helped put my equipment away. I made a promise to myself that I would thank her for that when speech returned to accessible abilities. 

“Is daddy okay?” Zach asked Wendy as I lagged behind walking to our car in the parking lot.

“I think so,” Wendy said, trying to sound confident and hiding a concerned look over her shoulder.

The next day, my body ached like star crossed lovers in a Shakespeare play. Getting out of bed was difficult, but only slightly more difficult than lying in bed. Every muscle group was compromised and sore. Raising my leg to get in the shower was an ordeal, because once one was in, I had to make the decision to bring it back out our bring the other in with it knowing I would have to step back out of the tub again. I did opt for the shower. I didn’t take the easy way out. 

Stepping into my underpants was probably the most dangerous thing I did that morning. Balance, and the inability to bend made me have to approach my underwear with far more strategy than I had ever needed in the past. 

Stairs were almost out of the question. Dropping off Zach at his school, I had a total of three (3) shallow, stairs to negotiate to get inside and sign him in. Zach bounded up them as if they weren’t there, and for all I know he leapt over them to the door. To me they meant necessary pain. I won’t say it was an ordeal, but I will say that when I went back to pick him up, I used the wheelchair ramp.

I’m not a fool—at least in this particular case, I’m not a fool—I know that all the effort and soreness and pain would be for nothing if I didn’t go back. So I went back. And I went back again and again. There is less pain, and my water bottle is always full. 

Don’t get me wrong, I hate it. But I feel better and like the progress I’m making. I’ve even gone alone. I’m going to keep going, because it’s important to my family, yes, but also for another reason. I never want to see Wendy wince from watching me wiggle, and that’s the Damm truth.