I'm not going to Pilates again tonight, though it's not what you might think. I went to Pilates Sculpt on Friday night, and had an absolutely awesome abtastical workout, that still had me saying "ouch" whenever I coughed or laughed yesterday. It reminded me of how Monday night classes used to be. I spoke to K-Dawg on Friday about some of my hang-ups with her new Monday night class (notably all the push-up work and how the class has gotten too advanced for me), and she basically pooh-poohed me. She told me that she didn't want me to stop coming, and challenged me to do other classes to increase my upper body strength so that I'd be able to keep up with the class. She even offered to cross-train with me. I told her that I still didn't know whether I would continue going to her Monday class, and she made a frowny face at me.
I walked away from our conversation feeling both annoyed and inspired. I don't think she truly understands how frustrating it is for me to remember that there used to be a time when that class was not boiling hot and gave me a fantastic ab workout. I also don't think she gets how demoralizing it is to no longer be able to keep up with the class that I've been going to for over five years now, especially since she changed the class to an advanced class to continue challenging the handful of us who had been going to her class for so long! On the other hand, I know that I do need to increase my upper body strength, and I really should either start lifting again once a week or going to a Group Power class on Wednesday nights, and her telling me that point blank made me feel somewhat inspired to make it a reality.
In the end I know that it will all boil down to how I feel that day. The days when I haven't gotten enough sleep (i.e., seven to eight hours of solid sleep), I'm just absolutely exhausted at the end of the work day. Managing behaviors and having to stay positive and upbeat for an entire day with the kidlets and kiddos, no matter how obnoxious some of them are being, is completely draining. There are some mornings where I wake up and say to myself, "You are going to go to the gym tonight," but at the end of the work day I just know it's not going to happen. When I'm exhausted and irritable, working out does not make me feel better. What usually happens is I go to the gym anyway, have a sucky workout because I'm so tired, and then I feel more annoyed afterwards because I feel like I wasted two and a half hours (one hour round trip to drive there, one and a half hours to work out). Whatever happened to the whole "exercise makes you release endorphins, endorphins make you happy" bit? It seriously doesn't seem to apply to me.
This all relates back to my very first blog post about my new year's resolution and getting enough sleep. I'd said I wanted to lose 8 pounds (that has since been upped to 12 pounds), and that the only way I could do so was to get more sleep. My past few months' struggle with finding the motivation to go to the gym proves that I was right about how it all comes back to getting enough sleep.
Anyway, back to why I'm not going tonight. I'm sick. Yes, again. Last night I developed a bad sore throat that prevented me from sleeping. I went to bed around midnight, and tossed and turned till about 2:30. I finally managed to drift off to sleep then, and woke up again at 6:15, 45 minutes before my alarm was going to go off. It's hard to explain, but I felt exhausted and wide awake, all at the same time. My throat was also killing me. When the alarm went off at 7:00, I got up and made the requisite calls to my boss, and my supervisor, occupational therapist, classroom, and fellow speech-language pathologist at my early intervention site. I went back to sleep again, then got up at 10:30 to call my clients (since I didn't want to call them at 7:00 this morning) to tell them that therapy was cancelled today. I also called Hawk to tell her I wouldn't be at Pilates for sure (I'd told her on Saturday that I wasn't sure whether I'd want to go to Pilates today), so she could relay the message to K-Dawg. We'll see if K-Dawg believes me or if she'll just think I'm making up excuses again.
No comments:
Post a Comment