For the past three weeks I have been participating in an activity I never thought I would do: 5 a.m. work out classes. Sometimes I think I am having an out-of-body experience hearing my alarm go off at 4:30 in the morning to purposefully get up and do physical activity.
It began with my friend asking me about four weeks ago if I wanted to try the class out at the beginning of its next session. Because we were communicating through text, I thought about it for a while and went over some pros and cons of getting up that early. I finally decided to give it a try. My activity level isn’t at any highs, and I’m not getting any younger with my first post-30 birthday coming up in a couple of weeks.
Seeing that I had chosen to do this, it made it that much sillier that I was dreading the thought of getting up for days before our first session. Truth be told, I wasn’t too worried about the work out part of the deal. I don’t mind exercising and welcomed the activity in my life. It was totally about the mornings.
I have never been a morning person. I don’t know how I got up for 6 a.m. drill team practice while in high school before completing a full day of classes and usually some sort of nightly activity. When in college, I scheduled my classes to start no earlier than 9 a.m. (I had to drop my one 8 a.m. class because I missed the first three classes and knew it wasn’t going to work out.) My senior year I even pulled off no classes before noon.
I was hoping that once I started my working life I would become more of a morning person. Unfortunately, that never really panned out and I still choose sleep over everything except for my kids in the morning.
The first day at Real Fitness was interesting. I have never done kick boxing before and had little to no idea what we would be doing. It was great having my friend there, too, because she had never done it before either, so if we went down, at least we would go down together.
I had to borrow boxing gloves the first day and set to kicking the stuffing out of a bag along with many push-ups, sit-ups and various other ways to make my body feel 10 years older than what I am. Ibuprofen was my best friend the next day, but we were back at again the next two days before I decided to take Friday off to catch up on a little sleep.
I have to say I feel really good the days I work out. If I can get home and get a little rest before starting my day it is even better, but I feel like I have accomplished something before the sun has even come up. As long as my friend is there to push me to go, I plan to continue working out while the moon is still in the sky, but I might need a little extra encouragement when the snow falls.
Contact Jamee A. Pierson at
641-792-3121 ext. 6534
or jpierson@newtondailynews.com