Back in March, someone in DHEC got the idea that the entire department should participate in the "Healthy Palmetto Challenge." This Challenge was a state-wide initiative circulated amongst all kinds of health-related organizations, encouraging individuals to walk. All the participants were issued a pedometer, a book for recording steps, and a booklet all about the health benefits of walking. Honestly, I have no idea how the challenge ended. I still have the pedometer, and have been using it faithfully, but I never got around to sending my steps in to the director of the program. In fact, there were twenty people who signed up for the program, just from my office, but none of us ever sent our steps in.
In the course of natural events, when a group fails to complete one task, they rarely decided to attempt the same task again. But now we were apparently not following the course of natural events, as about two weeks into our failed attempt to "Walk to Hollywood" (The original intent was that together, all the participants would record the number of steps needed to walk from Columbia, the state capitol, to Hollywood, SC. ), our assistant office manager came up with the brilliant idea to form an office-wide exercise program.
Believe it or not, we were excited about this. We signed all sorts of release forms, we all brought in our dusty old exercise DVDs, and just about everyone went out and bought yoga mats. We signed up for our exercise slot (mine was at 5:00 p.m!) and began exercising with gusto. Then began our "succeeding while failing."
On our first day we decided to do Pilates, which just about killed us all. As the woman on the DVD gave instructions, her voice was met with choruses of "Are you crazy?" "Ok, now she's just trying to kill us." "Wait, she wants us to bend that far?" Needless to say, the next day we were all moving VERY slowly and I know that I personally took the maximum amount of extra-strength Tylenol, which is something I almost never do.
After a few more days of this, we moved on to kickboxing. This was quite a departure from Pilates, and most of us were happy with this change. This did present it's own set of challenges though- even though our groups of exercise participants had dwindled by a few, there were still a few too many people in our tiny classroom. More than one person was almost given a black eye while "jabbing," and several participants made accidental attempts to kick holes in the walls.
We mastered kickboxing, and then promptly lost two co-workers: one to injury and one to switching shifts. We continued on though, now taking on "Theraband" resistance exercises. I was in heaven, I love my resistance bands! On our first day with the Therabands, we acquired a new participant. Two of us in the room were clearly not following the proper procedures, as even after completing the entire tape, we felt no soreness at all. Our new participant, however, was not so lucky. She almost called off sick the next day because she was in such a tremendous amount of pain.
Fast forward a couple of weeks to this last week. Two of my co-workers were working out with me to a new video, one that involved dance aerobics led by an entirely too energetic British girl. I had tried this video a few weeks prior with some other co-workers, but after she stopped doing the basic step moves, we got lost and eventually just started flailing around, telling each other that just the fact that we were moving was good enough. On Tuesday, I was doing well following all the moves this chick was doing, but I couldn't get the rhythm down. Basically it was like a bad Japanese movie. On Wednesday I was doing a lot better with the rhythm, but in order to keep up with the tape I had to eliminate a step or two with each set. Also, when she started adding spins to the "grapevine," I almost threw up, and I don't get easily nauseated by spinning.
Thursday was going to be my day! I hadn't really thought about the tape that much, but in the last moments I had before we started the tape, I decided that I WAS going to get all the moves and rhythm down! I started off strong, I mean, you really can't mess up marching in place. As we kicked it up a notch, I was still doing ok. I have those toe taps and cross steps memorized! We moved on to the "funky walk," which I can complete only if I channel moves I learned during my self-defense class in college. Then came the grapevines. Since I was over halfway done I was pretty proud of myself. I was extremely pleased that I was keeping up with the video, not losing my rhythm, and operating almost exclusively on muscle memory.
THUD! That was the sound my body made when I slammed into the plastic literature racks on the wall. I don't know what I was thinking. Actually, I probably wasn't thinking, and that was my problem. In any case, I lost it at that point. I tried to get back into the groove of the video, as we were just heading into the easy cool down portion, but I was just about doubled over with laughter. The impact jarred me out of whatever fairyland state of mind I was in, and my co-workers and I spent the last three minutes of the video laughing hysterically, out of breath, trying to keep up with what we were supposed to do. I imagine that we looked like drunks stumbling around. We looked up to see our assistant manager staring at us. A look of confused disbelief crossed her features as she said, "What are ya'll doing in here?!"
Later that night, as I typed a little blurb of my idea for this post onto a "sticky note" on my computer's desktop, I started off considering that afternoon's exercise a complete failure. However, by the time I finished mulling over the events of the week, I couldn't help but be pleased by the idea that even in our (my!) complete and utter lack of ability to master that routine, we were getting our half hour of physical activity in, laughing all the while, thus succeeding while failing.
Well, again it comes to that point in time where I must draw this post to a close. I have tomorrow off work due to Memorial Day, and my biggest plans for tomorrow are to visit the Atlantic Ocean early, like sunrise early, and find a Memorial Day observance here locally. It will be odd not standing in front of St. Mark's in Wadsworth for the parade and then walking to the ceremony in Woodlawn, but the holiday still has the same meaning hundreds of miles from home. Please remember all of those who died while serving our country and their families, and especially at this time, the family of 1st Lt. John Runkle of West Salem, who was a friend of my aunt and her family. Have a good night everyone.
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