How I attended 30 fitness classes in 30 days.
I never did any sport growing up. I didn’t like exercising and skipped PE classes whenever I could. Last time I signed up for a gym, I went to a body pump class. Within 5 minutes I struggled to breathe or see so I crawled out to the reception and asked them to call me an ambulance. I thought I was having a stroke. I was simply unfit. I never went back to that gym.
I tried bootcamps in the park but never managed to do more than a couple of sessions with each one. 10 minutes into the bootcamp I would inevitably drop on the grass on all fours drenched in sweat and breathing like a fish out of the water.
I kept coming back to a DVD workout by Julian Michaels with a catchy title 30 Day Shred. It was only 20 minutes’ long and there was no one to witness my embarrassing level of fitness. Most importantly, I started to enjoyed it and noticed the first changes in my body. Problem was, I couldn’t force myself to do it regularly. Too many temptations at home and no external accountability.
As someone who has been trying to lose weight for 7 years now, I know fully well that it’s all about eating less and exercising more but simply knowing, of course, is not enough. Shaping the desired lifestyle into a sustainable routine while simultaneously trying to get rid of bad habits is incredibly hard. I realised I needed to do something different to jump-start the change and start finding out and fine-tuning what works for me, physically, mentally and emotionally.
“If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got”. I kept repeating this quote in my head like a mantra.
I guess I have already been on the right wavelength towards change. Seemingly random events, things and thoughts kept stacking up like little lego blocks for a couple of years, until one day an app that I hardly ever used in the past 5 years, pinged me a notification about tickets to a rock concert of the band I never heard of. While in the app, I came across an offer for a free trial with MoveGB for fitness activities membership with no obligations. I signed up on the spot. As I browsed a multitude of activities for the next several hours, I thought: “This is it. With so much variety I will never get bored and I won’t need to commit to any one place or activity.
I immediately decided that I would sign up for a paid membership for a month. It’s expensive but if I work out every day, it would be worth it. And for the first month, I will also try a new exercise every day. Solid logic. I was excited — I had a plan and a purpose.
Week one I exercised every single day. I tried kung fu, three different types of yoga, street hip hop fusion dancing, intensive boxing cross-training, and running on a treadmill in the gym for one hour (in addition to classes, membership gives access to several gym chains from Virgin to PureGym). It was exhilarating.
By week two I thought it would be great to have a day off so I scheduled two classes on one of the days — a double bill of Afrobeats dance class followed by reformer pilates. I also went to karate class, pilates with kettlebells, Bikram yoga, body pump and technical intensive boxing and felt that I truly deserved some rest on my day off.
I decided to schedule even more double bills for the third week and have more days off. As long as I do 7 classes per week, it doesn’t matter if I do them every day or all 7 in a day. By then I also got a taste of what I enjoyed and felt less experimental. I settled into repeat regular classes of body pump twice a week, Bikram yoga once a week, vinyasa yoga once a week which left me with three classes to explore. They included pilates, yellow yoga and Les Mills Sh’bam dance workout. This was also the first week I cancelled one of the classes early on — San Shou Kuan martial arts — but I made up for it by booking an extra class on another day.
The fourth week was the hardest. The fatigue started to set in, the novelty was wearing off and I felt tired and lazy. I cancelled more classes — Capoeira, Krav Maga and one of the body pumps. I booked less challenging classes that week: Jivamukti yoga, belly dancing in addition to my now regular classes of reformer pilates, Bikram yoga, body pump. I also tried to pair all the classes so I will have even more free days. This tactic proved to be very exhausting. It also set me right back into my old routine on free days.
The fifth week became easier. I am trying three new classes which include Tahitian Belly Dance, Hola Hoops Tone and another attempt at Krav Maga, in addition to regular classes. As the month is coming to an end, I no longer will have the pressure of trying new classes every day and working out 7 times a week. I found my favourite activities on the most suitable days and times and I am happy to stick with the boring routine 5 times a week. I will still aim to explore a new class once a month.
