Hardbodies

So today I took two classes back to back at the gym – an hour and a half of Power Yoga followed by an hour of Super Sculpt. I’m not sure if it’s the boredom of unemployment or the hardbodies at the gym that got to me. Let me tell you though, the second I setup my step, grabbed my weights, and laid down my mat, I knew it was a bad idea. I wanted to bolt out the door of the strength training class, but after the amount of equipment I’d taken out, there was no escaping. I couldn’t leave the mess I’d made behind. Half of the exercises were so crazy that I simply rolled my eyes and mumbled to myself “yeah, right.” This teacher must have been on speed and had a father who was a contortionist. She was going from a lunge, to legs in the air, balancing on one arm, doing a push-up, back again…it was insane. I looked around the room from one body to the next and felt like I was in a scene from Ben Stiller’s gym, Globogym, in “Dodgeball.” Before I came to LA, I thought I was in pretty good shape. And maybe I was, by New York standards. LA has a whole new type of “skinny.” It’s not the New York “I only eat Tasti-d-lite so I look like a twig in my leggings” type of skinny. It’s a skinny yet “Madonna is my homegirl” look, where the woman are toned from head to toe. Maybe it’s because no one seems to work around here. Only in LA is a 2:30PM yoga class packed from wall to wall. Maybe these people get paid by the hour to fill the gym, making the “real” members such as myself, feel inadequate, and thus, motivated to keep our membership. These people are here so often that they don’t even have time to do their laundry – that must be why everyone walks around without their shirts on. A common NY move is the lazy elliptical “work-out,” in which after an hour on the machine, not a sweat has been broken and the amount of energy exerted is the same as that to go to the kitchen a few times while watching an episode of “Idol”. Not in LA. You literally can’t – I tried. Somehow, the machine must be rigged to make the work-out more difficult. It probably doesn’t help that the heat is always turned up to an obscenely high temperature. I think I’m the only one who notices. I mentioned it to one teacher and he simply laughed. I know I’m funny but I couldn’t find the humor in my asking him, “is there anyway to lower the heat in here?” Maybe it was my delivery. Or maybe it was all the endorphins making him giddy. Either way, if I’m going to fit in here, I have my work cut out for me. Just a few more days of Ultimate Conditioning followed by Washboard Abs and I’ll be a on my way.