Keep On Dancin’

Today, I tried Zumba.

Let me note here that I completely failed at the class itself.

I don’t know where the moment of insanity came from, but earlier today I asked SV about it and told her I thought I’d try it. She goes once a week and loves it, and it’s dancing, so I figured I’d like it too. I was trying to be realistic about what I could and couldn’t do, but I thought maybe I could push myself a little bit and that the different movements wouldn’t hurt too much. SV warned me about some knee stress, but my knees have been feeling pretty good, so I thought maybe I’d just roll with it and change things up to keep from hurting them.

I spent most of the day being nervous about it, and came close to just calling the whole thing off, but when I get “brave” like that, I tend to roll with it because it doesn’t happen on a regular basis. I knew I had the option to leave, and there were balance balls in the room itself, so I had somewhere to sit if I wanted to take a break.

It started out okay. I could at least follow what the instructor was doing.

I made it to the second “warm up.” The first one kicked my butt. The second one was lunges and squats, things I thought I could just fake it through and really couldn’t. Needless to say, I lasted about ten minutes and was out of there (and I did have to sit down in those ten minutes).

Honestly? I felt horrible about leaving. I felt like a loser. I felt every single pound and inch of being out of shape and fat and unable to move like other people move. The fact that I’m improving with every workout and seeing good things happening in other areas of my life (breathing, mobility, etc.) was completely forgotten because I couldn’t  dance for 45 freakin’  minutes.

One of the issues I have is my ankles. They’re not strong and the side to side Zumba moves really put some stress on them. Coming out of the class, I had it in my head I was going to do my regular machine, but I was in too much pain and I didn’t have the enthusiasm to push through, so I went to my car. On the way out, I asked the girls at the front desk to tell SV I would wait for her outside.  I was doing okay until they were nice to me and asked if I was okay and if I wanted a glass of water and a banana.

When I’m already upset, people being nice to me sends me to that place where I just cry. So I made it to the car (took the water, declined the banana) and had a small tear fest. I felt better afterwards, though I’m still a little bummed about not being able to do the class. However, I’m not going to give up. I’m going to keep going to the gym and moving more, and eventually, I’ll go back to a Zumba class and try again.

This isn’t over, Zumba. We will meet again someday.

A.