Why I Hate Exercise Videos
Yesterday, Mr. BBM convinced me to do P90X with him. If you don't know what I'm talking about, spend five minutes watching infomercial TV. He's that annoyingly ripped guy who doesn't shut up who looks like he's working out in a dungeon. Yep, that's him.
I know several people who have done it and like it. I'm just not an exercise video type of girl. In fact, that's putting it mildly. I despise exercise videos. The people are always too perfect looking and totally annoying. Plus, they smile a lot when they work out. Who does that? I mean seriously. It's just not realistic. And would it kill them to put a girl in the video who actually looks like she needs to work something off? How about someone who doesn't look carved out of marble? That would be a nice touch.
So, yesterday we got the kids occupied upstairs and moved the coffee table. I told Mr. BBM I could not possibly listen to that main guy talk the whole time so he just put the cues on for when you were supposed to switch exercises. I was still annoyed and I'm fairly certain Mr. BBM could feel my skeptical glares from across the room.
Then, I realized there was someone even more annoying than the main guy. . . the blonde girl. First of all, I should use the word "girl" lightly. She did more pull-ups in that video than I've ever seen a guy do in a single setting. She's practically a man, or actually, more like a robot. She started off in a sweatshirt and quickly unzipped and took it off to reveal a sports bra with a flag on it. Her shorts were too short. Her abs were too tight and frankly, she just made me want to barf. I mean, I guess that's one way to go about weight loss, but it's not exactly a good way.
What it boils down to is this: I don't like videos. The people are too perfect; the bodies too unattainable to make you feel like even trying, and they are all so annoying. Once I saw that woman do pull-ups I felt more like eating a tube of ring bologna than working out. And working out with Mr. BBM is not my favorite thing to do either. When my thighs start to burn after 1000 squats, I feel like screaming at him that his form is all wrong. When he starts sweating, I start yelling at him to grab a towel so he doesn't drip on my floor.
I would never talk to a trainer like that, which is why I much prefer working out with a trainer over working out with my husband.
After we were done with the video, he told me he enjoyed working out with me. I told him I didn't like it one bit. It's like this. . . when I worked out with my trainer, he could scream at me and push me all he wanted. Sure I was telling him to "sixth letter of the alphabet" off in my head but I'd never say that out loud. I wouldn't want him to think I'm a jerk. Plus, when you're working out with someone you don't know as well, you tend to push yourself a little harder. You don't want him to think you're a wuss or something. However, with Mr. BBM, there's no such courtesy. If he tells me I'm doing something wrong, he better strap on his running shoes because I am coming after him.
With the exception of my trainer, I like to work out alone unless you consider the company in my headphones. And me and P90X? I just don't see us having a productive relationship. I don't find it exactly reconstructed ACL friendly. And as far as Mr. BBM and I working out together goes? Well, unless I put my headphones on so I can block out everyone else, I don't know that it's going to work.
T.I. tells me I can have "whatever I like," and I'm not liking.
Twi-Curious
I feel like it's semi-necessary for me to explain myself. I should preface it by saying this: one of the very first dates I went on with Mr. BBM, back when we were in school at Pitt, was to the movie theater in Squirrel Hill to watch "Interview with a Vampire."
We walked home after that movie, through the park as the sun was going down and I was convinced that I would be devoured by a vampire. A few years later, one of my roommates handed me a copy of another Ann Rice book and I let it sit on my dresser for weeks before finally returning it to her. I had cracked it once. I was not at all interested. If I want to read something creepy, I'll read Poe, thank you very much.
Last year, I had a student in my writing class that started at 8 a.m. Apparently, the dude who plays Edward in the "Twilight" movie (see, I don't even know his name!) was signing autographs and she had set her alarm for like 4 a.m. so she could be in King of Prussia at 5 a.m. and hopefully meet him. When she saw that the line was already three miles long, she turned around and drove back to class. She didn't want to miss my class. This girl NEVER missed a class.
I heard some of my students talking about it, but I never had any desire to read it. The new Dan Brown book? Yes. It's sitting on my book shelf and I am saving it for a rainy weekend, because I want to devour it in two days, like I did all his other books. "Twilight"? No, thank you.
Then my neighbors started talking about it and I was feeling left out. Then my sister, who only usually reads stuff I've never even heard of, started reading it and when she was finished she offered me the book.
I let it sit, like the Ann Rice book so many years ago, but it was like it was calling out to me. "Come BBM, deliriously addicting vampire smut (which isn't even really smut because nothing happens people, NOTHING!!!) waiting, just for you. Come now."
And so I started reading it one night at swim practice.
I had the book sitting on my knees, not wanting anyone to see the spine or the cover for fear they would know I was reading it. I was embarrassed. Yet, after seeing a centimeter of the book, at least three other swim mom's inquired as to whether or not I was reading it. I sheepishly admitted that I had caved. Yes, I am reading "Twilight." To steal a phrase from my sister, I had to admit that I was Twi-curious. I also added that I had stuff to do so there was no way I was going to read it in two days the way everyone else I know did. No, I would take my time and savor it (or not).
That's when I started losing sleep. I slept only five hours the first night and didn't go to bed until almost 2 a.m. I had been reading straight since 5:45. I was exhausted but I did it again the next night. I was at a meeting that night until almost 10:30, yet I still came home and curled up with that book, which is obviously dripping with addicting vampire venom or something.
The next morning, while sipping my coffee and wondering how I could get more sleep, I finished it. I started reading, immediately, the first chapter of "New Moon" and then started making death threats to my sister, that if she didn't finish "New Moon" that night, I might just have to come rip it from her icy cold dead hands.
This vampire stuff is clearly getting to me.
Each night, since I started reading that book, I've had dreams about vampires, am suspicious of people with dark circles under their eyes (myself included thanks to no sleep), and I am focused only on obtaining the next book so I can dig in and read more.
It's not like anything really even happens in the book. But what it is, and the reason why the single biggest group of people reading this book is younger married women like me, is the teenage angst, the unrequited love, the memory of what it was like the first time those hormones fired up and you just wanted that boy to hold your hand or brush his lips against yours.
That feeling is addicting, and that is exactly why people who spend a ridiculous amount of time folding little laundry are the same ones who are falling head over heels in obsession with Edward.
I admit it. I am one of them. Hate me if you must, but remember, I've been learning a lot about vampires. I'm practically growing fangs.
Karate at the Club
Being on the board of directors at my country club has been a lot of work so far. It's enjoyable work, but there is so much to be done and so many things to find out about and look into that I find I'm spending hours at a time, just researching how to run a wine festival and things like that.
Tonight, I had every intention of going to karate for the first time in a couple weeks. But tonight, we're meeting at the club for a demo on a new computer system that is crucial for our club's success moving forward. I can't miss it.
Our new general manager is hard at work creating fun dinner nights that are family friendly and I feel like it's my duty to be there to support them. It's really cut into dojo time and I need to figure out a way to get my karate in. Without it, I'm just not the same.
I think what I need to do is lobby for turning part of the club into a dojo. Then I could train across the street from my house and I'd be able to be there more often. Plus, I could practice punches and kicks while people discussed ideas with me. I could totally streamline two important activities. Actually, I think adding some productive and stress-relieving punching and kicking would be good for all board members.
Unfortunately, I think that's one thing that is not going to happen. At least when Big I's swimming is over with, I'll be able to get to Saturday classes, rainbow colored knee and all.
Psy-ki-do: Predicate Matching for Rapport
Pat Parker here from Mokuren Dojo. Look at this! Black Belt Mama has so kindly agreed to let me post some of my crazy Psy-ki-do ideas on her most excellent blog. I have previously guest posted in this series on Dojo Rat's blog, on Marks' blog, and on Kris Wilder's blog. Also, Sensei Strange followed up with his own Psy-ki-do blog post.
Today's Psy-ki-do post is on teaching martial arts. I am a little hesitant posting about pedagogy on a professional teacher's blog, but as Dame Dorothy Sayers writes in the beginning of The Lost Tools of Leaning, you don't really have to be that informed to express an opinion.
Teaching in any domain, including martial arts, is about communication. In the domain of martial arts, you are trying to get your ideas about your skills out of your head and into someone else's head. But there's always some distortion between the teacher and the student.
- Often, the teacher has not completely mastered the skill, so his own understanding is incomplete.
- The student always filters what the teacher says through a set of presuppositions, creating an interpretation of what he thinks the teacher said.
- Often there are cultural or language barriers.
You can't really do anything about the first two points above. That's just the way the world works. But what about the third point – cultural and language barriers? It turns out that even when teacher and student come from the same culture and speak the same language, there can be language barriers.
Some really interesting pseudoscientific technobabble has come out in the last quarter of a century from the NLP folks. Despite having almost no shred of hard evidence to back them up, some of what they say is intuitively valid, as well as being potentially useful in the field of teaching and in the domain of martial arts.
If you check out the Wikipedia articles on NLP, you will see that much of what they say is based on this idea that different people favor different knowledge representation systems. What that means is that some people organize and store information in their minds visually, some auditorially (is that a word?), and some kinesthetically. Not really a ground-breaking or shocking theory. Mostly makes sense.
Well, it turns out that when speaking, people mostly choose their words unconsciously based on their internal knowledge representaitions, so when trying to communicate an idea, people tend to use words related to their own favored representation system. A classic example is the idea that a primarily-visual person might ask, "Can you see what I'm saying?" while a primarily-kinesthetic person might ask, "Can you feel it?" or "Do you understand me?" or "Do you get it?"
The NLP guys say that an attentive teacher can figure out, based on the student's word choice, what that student's favored representation system is. Then that teacher can match their own speech to that representation system to promote communication. In the example above, the teacher might determine that the student uses predominantly auditory words, and the teacher would deliberately ask, "Do you hear what I'm saying." The NLP guys call this "Predicate Matching for Rapport," and while this is an over-simplified presentation, this is the gist of it.
As I said above, this is pseudoscience, but if effective, it has great application in conflict as well as in pedagogy. Researchers often fail to demonstrate these effects, but the theory has an intuitively attractive feel to it (social validity). It feels aiki-like, the idea that by getting in synch with your student you can facilitate better communication.
Additionally, it's easy to learn to do, costs you nothing, and being more consciously attentive to your audiance just about never hurts the situaition, so here's the homework assignment:
Spend a day listening to people around you. Listen to see if they speak more often using seeing words, hearing words or feeling words. Do this for 2-3 days and then try deliberately using their favored choice of words instead of your own when you talk to them. Don't expect magical, hypnotic, Jedi powers, but watch to see if the tone of your conversation is different. I think you'll find this Psy-ki-do trick fun, interesting, and potentially useful in any teaching situation. Who knows, you might even get good enough at it that you could use it in a conflict.
Goodbye 2009
2009 was a pretty fantastic year up until December. It marked a year of getting to know my amazing neighborhood as we came out from hibernation in the spring of 2009 and embarked on a fun spring, summer and fall of play dates, parties, and all around good times.
2009 was also the year that I finally achieved Shodan. That day in June stands out as one of the best moments of my life. The culmination of years of hard work, two surgeries and finally success, is a high point, not just for 2009 but for my entire life. However, I ended 2009 much as I started it in regards to my knee. Last January was my second surgery because of bruising and pain. I'm starting 2010 with a lot of bruising once again. That is not how I wanted to start my year. I'm hoping that 2010 will be the year that many of my knee issues are resolved, once and for all.
December brought with it a great vacation to Orlando FL and Lil C's first visit to Disney World. It also brought with it a three day delay in getting back home, a thrown together Christmas that felt more like a marathon and unfortunately, the death of our beloved cat Colby. We are all hoping for good health for our remaining cat Bear in 2010.
Personally, I think resolutions are a good thing. However, they can also be things that fill us with guilt. So, in the interest of avoiding guilt, but making positive changes in my life as well, I have a few. A neighbor of mine made her resolution last year, to moisturize more often. Initially I cracked up laughing and then I thought about it. I should totally make that resolution for myself. Then I realized how difficult it would be to keep up with that one. As much as I'd like to make that resolution as well, I know there's no way I'll be standing in my bathroom each day slathering on lotion. There's nothing quite like the disgusting feeling of pulling on jeans over top of just-lubed up legs. So, I'm going to leave that one to my neighbor, wish her much success, and make some different, more achievable ones for me.
First, I'm making a resolution to be more committed to getting my knee back in shape. I'm going to try to do something active every day, whether it's some ab work with the medicine ball or riding the stationary bike while I watch Flash Forward, I'm making a daily commitment to do something at least once a day.
Second, I'm making a resolution I know I can keep and that's my commitment to the board of directors at our local country club. I've already done some cool things over there and I want to keep the momentum going and continue to come up with new and fun ideas for the club.
Finally, and this will be the most difficult, I want to be a better Mom. I want to exercise more patience and spend more time doing fun things with my kids. If there is one thing I've learned this year, it's that time flies incredibly fast and if we don't take advantage of the time we have with loved ones when we have it, it may not be there tomorrow.
I'd like to wish all of my readers a very Happy New Year! What are some of your resolutions? Why not make one of them to read this blog more regularly? Hit subscribe in the menu above!
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