Finding my hero…
10-19-09
As many of you know, I have recently taken up indoor cycling as an amazing way to crank up my cardiovascular training. Things were getting a bit boring on the elliptical machine at the gym, so I went to a spinning class, and got hooked instantly. I wrote about it in a recent blogpost, and since then have grown more and more excited by the prospects of getting stronger and better at this new activity. I suppose that one of the reasons why I get such a great kick out of it is because I feel like I’m part of a community of sorts. I know that many people participate in exercise classes, go through the motions, and don’t necessarily feel any sort of connection to the people around them. But there are many people who do… so let me tell you about why the people who sweat by my side are such an important part of my journey.
In my previous post about spinning, I talked about what it’s like to do a ride with a group of other spinners. The energy is palpable, and sometimes the shared sense of dread can be kind of intense. But at the end of the hour, you take a look around and see the satisfaction and pride on everyone’s faces that you had accomplished something — that somehow today, you worked harder than you did the day before, and you’re a better person for having done so. That’s such a huge part of what drives me to go to a class 4 or 5 days a week now — yes the workout is fantastic, but the sense of community is close to spectacular.
Over the past year or so, I had also taken up a kickboxing class — a weekly meeting of some people at my gym who hammered out some amazing kicking and punching sequences on a couple of WaveMaster bags. The class was fantastic, but over the past few weeks, I haven’t been totally feeling it. I’ve gone, I’ve punched, I’ve kicked, I’ve sweated. I’ve done everything the instructor told me to do (and then some), but I wasn’t feeling that great at the end of it all. And it is only in reflecting upon my spinning classes that I have begun to understand why.
Read more at: http://tinyurl.com/yf7qqyc
