Lessons from the Gym

I love to work out. I have been going to the gym for longer than you can tell by looking at me and I have learned quite a few lessons. I won’t share all of them with you right now, but I will tell of the latest lesson.


 Lesson 1: Middle age soccer Moms have abs of steel.


 I took this class called boot camp because the words “Boot Camp” make me think of push-ups in the mud, cool uniforms and specialized training to kill. I show up and it’s in a room with polished wood floors and 20 middle aged women who love to make men in their 30’s look weak, by-the-way I was the ONLY male in the class. The majority of the class I was kicking their butt’s (which did cause me to smirk a little on the inside). Then it came to an abdominal exercise called “Planks from Hell” (I added the “from Hell” part). This exercise works your stomach muscles by lying on your forearms and keeping the rest of your body off the ground except your feet. This causes all the stress to be distributed straight to your stomach muscles. When we first started I thought to myself, “Are you serious? Where is the challenge?” What I did not know is that when God took Adams rib to make woman He took an extra percentage of man’s ab strength. The other little tid-bit of information was that women evidently can go through the whole day in this position. I, on the other hand, started going into what looked like convulsions within 1 minute. I wasn’t shaking a little, I was having full on seizures, the kind that only happens from electricity or a Rodney Howard Brown conference. Then came the sweating, not a little bit like Paul Blarts’ “love sweats” not even manly sweating from a good game of full court basketball, it looked like my skin lost its ability to contain water. I looked like that guy from the first X-men movie who turned into a puddle of water. All of this humiliation is multiplied when I realize that this room is ¾ windows. Which means that all the guys that used to be my gym buddies see me in a state of panic from the torture I am barely enduring and now can’t bring themselves to make eye contact with me.


I will tell you that the pinnacle of the humiliation of this class was that as I was going through all of this physical torture, they also declared psychological warfare by blasting what I will call “Chick Rock” the entire time. Songs from artists like Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears, Madonna and some other girl who has a song about Billy being drop dead gorgeous but he treats her bad, but she can’t leave him because he is so good looking (this song gave me flashbacks of high school). You're probably thinking that was the last boot camp class for me.


Well your wrong my friend. I will tell you what has kept me coming back. It’s the thought that someday I might be in a life or death situation that requires me to have the abdominal strength to plank for 30 minutes, and in that situation do I want abs of a dude or a soccer mom?


I think we all know the answer to that question.