Step and Tone

In concert with the 'balance' concept and trying to stay healthy, I decided to sign up for a 'Step and Tone' class at the UW's gym during winter quarter. Little did I know that I was really assigning myself concentrated doses of humility in 1 hour intervals twice a week.


I think that being home schooled through high school and not being used to group PE exercise, might be contributing, but I also think that an innate level of uncoordinated that I have never been fully aware of, is finally being completely expressed.

The Monday night sessions were a step class where complicated instructions with strange names were shouted out to a room of us over a track of upbeat music from the 90's. The instructor would say something like, "V step!" or "Indecision" and apparently the other class participant's cerebellums already knew what those instructions meant. The fact that I had absolutely no clue what I was doing, was made even worse by watching the rest of the class execute each move perfectly. One of my medical school classmates also took the class with me and I was astounded as she improvised and modified the step moves with the grace and glory of a ballerina. It turns out that she had taught a step class in Alaska, before moving to Seattle for medical school. I couldn't help thinking: Where does medical school dig up all these perfect people? When I talk to my classmates many of them have done absolutely amazing things before entering medical school - played professional basketball, gone to Nationals in figure skating, published tons of papers, etc. Anyway, I digress. Back to step and tone.

On Wednesdays, the "tone" part of the class commenced where we engaged in lifting some weights and different strength training type activities. One of the activities we do on the flour towards the end of the hour is "the plank" for 1 minute. I have included a couple pictures for educational purposes:




"The plank." I downloaded this picture from a Google image search and I thought this looked a little too peaceful, so I decided to edit the image to give a more realistic picture of what really happens (see below).

This picture explains it a little better, I think.