Feminine Wiles

In my kick boxing class, for the past several months the steady ones are two women and one (or two sometimes) guy(s). Over the years, there have been comings and goings. Several couples have hung out for a few months and left without notice. Some young girls have shown up creating much enthusiasm all around, but soon left. The young boys have amazed us with their strength and the ability to suddenly peak, as compared to the rest of us, who slowly plod on to our goal. I myself take breaks. Close to the marathon when I am purportedly training for it and cannot afford a three day a week kick boxing diversion. Close to the end of my semester when things get busier and busier. When I spend back to back weekends travelling and need to catch up on household chores and sleep through the week. But overall, a handful of us are reasonably regular in attendance. We all have a very good equation with our instructor, who is really cool, friendly, approachable, and extremely passionate and good at what he does.

The other girl (woman) in the class is a doctor. She is VERY committed. Her recent goal seems to be to lose weight (she is NOT fat though she does not come in the slim category) though over the years I have seen her just be focussed on getting her daily quota of exercise. She works hard. Is amenable to using weights although it makes every exercise so much more difficult. She occasionally hates things to do with jumping, but otherwise, even if she complains, she DOES what the instructor tells us to do. No compromises, no short-cuts, no time wasting tactics.

There is me. I am a bit crazy though very focussed as well. I LOVE aerobic activity and have good stamina for it. If he says run up and down the stairs one gazillion times, I do it. I don't complain. But I don't like stretching. Have some species of mental block towards it, but I try hard though I cannot do things as well as he expects. Repetitions on the bag, usually, even if it is real difficult, I put my everything into it. Generally I don't take short cuts though if I have slept less the previous night, I don't have my full energy. And yes, I am much stronger on my legs than my hands, so I do better with kicks than punches. Recently, he has aggressively pushed me to do push-ups, and the good news is that I can do a good number of them now which means my arms are improving.

Now, the boys. Usually these are a little younger than us. They look fit. No pregnancy flab hanging out. They are obviously much stronger than us. They can probably lift us (at least me) up with one arm and topple us over. They should technically be able to do twice the number of push-ups than I can. Not to mention being able to whack the heck out of the bag much harder than me. Occasionally they show off their abilities with a WHAM! on the bag or by saying 'SIXTY' at the end of their push-ups. But generally, they are so fucking lazy! The two of us women have started calling them our audience, which is a joke ha ha, but not really funny because there we are sweating like crazy and going blah blah and the guys are just chilling pretty much.

Which would be fine with me if they were all flabby babby and I could gloat saying ooh checkout my triceps and they would be ashamed. Sadly, this is not true. They run less than us, they do less reps than us, they refuse to bring their weights, they cheat on the number of reps of things they do, but still, god damn it, they are fitter, stronger, and more muscular than us, and if one of their kicks (even if the form is less correct than mine) connects with me, I know I will be injured. Its damn frustrating.