Curves

I am trying to psych myself up to go to Curves. For the uninitiated, that's an exercise parlor for women only.

I say "parlor" and not "gym" because, honestly, the exercise equipment employed there is not anything like you'll find at Gold's.

The basic premise, for me anyway, is that doing SOMETHING is better than doing nothing; Curves is the only exercise program I've ever followed that I can do and not injure myself.

I'm an unfortunate combination of completely unathletic and highly competitive??? Those two qualities do NOT serve me well when I try a more strenuous kind of exercise program so, for me, Curves is it.

It's a girlie place; this I know because most ladies come in to exercise wearing their street clothes and never work up a sweat! So... it's easy to go directly from exercising to having lunch with friends!

LOL. What could be better than THAT!?

The set-up includes 15-16 pieces of equipment which they claim, done in rotation, will exercise all major body parts. These are alternated with aerobic stands so you can get some cardio as well.

But not me. I skip all the aerobic crap and just do the machines 'as are'.

There's a disembodied voice over the intercom that tells you when to move from one piece of equipment to the next and you keep doing this for half an hour three times a week at least.

BUT (and there's always that Big But!?) I refuse to LISTEN to the voice and, instead, follow my OWN program whereby I just keep trying to up the number of reps I'm doing and/or speed up the implementation of same.

Therein lies the rub.

The Curves I'm going to now has way too many women there all the time!?? I've tried early, late, and most times in between and - darn it all - the people there are doing the Real Program!? Somebody's always RIGHT THERE while I'm still trying to Do Better on any given machine. It's very frustrating for me!!

(Yes, I do see the irony. I'M the one NOT doing the program, ergo, I'm sure the other ladies are equally or maybe even more frustrated with ME!? Moving on....)

The truth is I HATE the going but I do like being there. It is very difficult for me to make myself drive the car over there but once I'm in the door I rather enjoy challenging myself, quietly, from machine to machine.

Most of the ladies are my age or older which makes it very easy to delude myself, during that half-hour period, that I am doing GREAT!! I can honestly say that I perform harder than a lot of the other women I see around me mindlessly following that voice.

To be fair, though, there are women my daughters' ages who sometimes happen into Curves while I am there and I can't hold a candle to them. That's OK. I can forgive that because this next generation of women has been so much smarter than mine. They have exercised throughout their whole lives and have long since understood the benefit of it where I am only just now realizing that doing something is better than doing nothing if you want your joints and muscles to continue working reasonably.

So I innore them and let them do their own thing while I do mine.

My program may not be the Curves model but it works for me. The voice be damned!