back to it!

 {Image via}

Hello Gang! Today is a Monday, and today is the day that  I brought with me my gear, and my dedication to getting back to working out. After a youth of being advised to try this sport, try that sport, I completely and wholly despised the idea of being fit - sports were always presented as a means to keep one healthy and my parents - who presumably enjoyed competitive sports in their youths - considered them to be a fun way to bond with your peers and maintain a healthy lifestyle. I hate competition (why yes I did move to New York City, not for school but to work, does that not jive with your image of a non-competitive person?), and when someone is watching me - even over my shoulder in a workplace - everything comes slower and I second-guess my every move and I become a nervous, twitching disaster. So you can imagine the sort of participant I was in any number of those team sports. I didn't even like tennis because I was always fairly sure my opponent was constantly annoyed by how our games would start-stop, start-stop as I missed ball after ball. I did enjoy swimming growing up.... (Wonderfully solo. I didn't even mind that everyone outside of a pool could see that I swim how I walk - which is to say in diagonals. I'm a veer-er.) When all I have to focus on is me, I can excel to great heights. The trouble is that life is not lived in a vacuum. ;)

Anyway, in college, I discovered the gym. And I loved it. I discovered weight training classes and kickboxing classes and aerobics classes and classes focused on ab work and lunges and I actually became quite dedicated. I discovered weight lifting in a sweaty room populated almost entirely by guys, though always with one dedicated gal lunging her away across the floor. And I loved watching my body transform and gain strength and feel capable. Physically capable to lift a weight I couldn't have lifted previously, to do the harder oblique work, to do the extra push up. I loved feeling my body grow and gain abilities. I would have competitions with real athletes in my dorm to see who could hold a plank longer, and the competition felt fun, not forced. The endorphins didn't hurt either, I'll admit. But my gym enjoyment fell away after college. A lot of it was my social circle, after college my friends in the working world didn't find going to the gym together to be a fun way to spend an hour or two. Plus, once the gym wasn't covered in tuition, most couldn't scrape up the cash to join one.

Still, all the past aside, today I am happy to say that I am excited to find that familiar rush of doing, that familiar soreness of muscles that will surely come tomorrow. I'm excited to march out to the weight room populated with dudes, nod to my fellow sweaty-weight-room gal who will surely be lunging around back there, trip on over to the smallest side of the weights rack, and start toning up. While my fellow sisters slog away on treadmills I will work on building back up the lean muscle mass I know is still lurking down there...someplace. I have faith it's been waiting all these years to return my body to its most capable state, and I'm excited to help it emerge. Happy Monday all!