When I say I’m unathletic, I mean I’m unathletic. I’ve tried every sport in the book. Lacrosse required far too much running, and softball necessitated a hand-eye coordination that I sorely lack. Meanwhile, gymnastics called for a flexibility that I did not possess. I would get too bored during soccer and zone out, fatigued. Cheerleading was a joke, in that I was too short to be a base and not light enough to be a flyer, so I was stuck… holding a girl’s ankles? Yeah, not for me. I really did my best with ballet, but within me is some kind of special lack of control over my body.
Maybe sports aren’t for me. I’ve attempted other routes of physical fitness, stretches and home workouts. I’ve downloaded C25k, an app that is targeted to take you from the couch to a 5k within a couple of months, more times than I can count. My mom was an avid runner, at my age, and she would tell me, time and again, “Keep at it! It’ll stop hurting eventually!”
But it hurt! And there were better things I could be doing. Like eating, one of my favorite pastimes, or catching up on TV, or playing with my dogs, or doing, quite literally, anything else.
I have to do something now though, especially since I’ve entered college. In high school, it was eight hours of classes a day, with a break up and down the stairs every hour — I was constantly moving. Now, I’m sitting in the same place for up to four or five hours. It’s not really sustainable to continue the same avoidance of physical activity that I’ve been perpetrating my entire life. But I don’t trust myself enough to work out on my own. What now?
Well, if you’re a student at UNC-CH and you bring your OneCard to any one of the gyms or rec centers, you get in — for free! That’s free access to all of the equipment, if you’re brave enough to pursue a personal workout.
You could also participate in what I have discovered, at long last, to be my preferred mode of exercise, group classes! As a woman and someone that is notoriously bad at anything requiring bodily skills, the general gym area is incredibly intimidating. I’m self-conscious about my lack of coordination (I’m working my way up to confidence, but it’s true), and being a singled-out individual in a sea of people who mostly know what they’re doing is enough to make my skin crawl. In a class, however, everyone is sort of in the same boat. In Zumba, for example, no one but the instructor knows the full choreography. No one’s going to do it perfectly, and the workout is so challenging and non-stop that it’s difficult to find the energy required to focus on how well anyone else is doing. If you’re feeling extra self-conscious, it’s perfectly acceptable to retreat toward the back of the studio. It’s just the way it is! In my six whirlwind weeks of gym classes, I have yet to encounter anyone who’s attended any course just to flex.
My personal favorite class is Cycle. At UNC-CH, the Student Recreation Center requires you to register a bike before the class, and, while they accept walk-ins, there’s sometimes not enough seating to fit them in, which says a lot for its popularity and its redeemability. I’m wound pretty tightly, and I put more pressure on myself than is entirely necessary, but Cycle, twice a week, is a good time for me to pay attention to the mechanics of my body and nothing else. The paper I’m struggling over or the pile of readings I still have to finish poof into nothing for the forty-five minutes I’m biking in the darkness of the cycling studio.
Gym classes receive a lot of criticism, as most things that are majority female do. Misogynists tend to criticize them for “lack of intensity,” or for women “not being able to motivate themselves without a group.” It’s so rare that a majority female group gets to unite in a singular space and feel confident while working out in a place that isn’t set in a team. There’s also an epidemic of women getting hit on and feeling uncomfortable due to an objectifying presence, so classes provide a safety zone where women are allowed to focus on their health and only their health. That’s not to say this is a gatekept community — my cycling class is usually 50/50, and more and more guys are attending movement courses like Cardio Dance and yoga. But the mainstream gym class? Spearheaded by women, for women.
This isn’t to say that gym classes are easy. I had to walk out of a kickboxing course, last week, because I thought I was going into cardiac arrest. However, it wasn’t as strong of a blow to my self-confidence as it once would have been. I have other classes I enjoy, and I’ve finally found my niche. It’s indescribable to finally be able to enjoy a workout.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go get my clothes for Cycle!