Highlights: Step aerobics – if you don’t already enjoy a step class, I am not going to recommend going- there are plenty of more fun and aerobically effective classes on offer in gyms.
My highlights section above may prevent readers from making it passed the first sentence. I have already given my conclusions – I didn’t really enjoy it and I won’t (I think) be going again. But it was a bit of a laugh(able) for 40 minutes. I don’t want to judge those who attended and enjoyed the class, it obviously was for them.
So why didn’t I like it? Preconceived notions that my gym would have ‘pepped it’ up a bit since the nineties. Doubtless ‘step aerobics’ is synonymous remember the neon leotards, with oh so thin women stepping up and down to the beat of some noisy music, perhaps with a toe tap here and there. I even remember the step, which home practitioners were likely to own – it was green with coloured tubing around the base allowing the step to be raised or lowered dependent on ability. I really wanted to find a picture to share with you but I did find a YouTube link to a Jane Fonda video. It’s actually quite amusing.
But the world has moved on. Recent fitness crazes, which have permeated through leisure centres and into the vernacular, included Zumba – which is a lot more fun and easy to pick up. The step class I attended seemed a bit wooden in comparison. There was no gyrating of hips here. There were routines, but they were hard to follow unless you had been to the class before and the step made them a dangerous obstacle. The instructor didn’t help. Instructions such as ‘Basic’ (easy for beginners ‘Rhythm’ (for those that mastered the other steps) and ‘Shuffle’ were called out to instruct us what to do but I found it irritating. I was not allowed just to follow what I could handle. I simply don’t remember this from my days watching my mum at the local leisure centre but it didn’t seem an exciting improvement.
It would be wrong to say that there were no plus points- it genuinely seemed good work for my calves which ached a bit the next day, but at least I could walk (not like when I attempted a spinning class). I sweated a bit, and felt like I was doing something than just going home on the tube or working late.
It could be questioned why I included this as a challenge in the first place. Partly because I think a lot of women in their thirties think it is time to ‘step’ the fitness up a bit (no irony intended), and it helped with my losing weight challenge. Mostly it was nostalgic reasons. I recall sitting at the back of the class at the local authority leisure centre, watching a room full of women stepping up and down on a plastic box. I desperately wanted to join in, thinking this would make me a proper woman.
It goes along with the ‘Every girls’ new handbook’ that 10 year olds were scouring. I even remember founding some sort of beauty club in the playground at primary school, believing that looking after you was the height of sophistication. Its laughable now… the only thing I remember discussing was how to prevent white spots in fingernails, as this was our most prevalent issue. Many of these challenges relate to pre-conceived notions of how adult life in London would be, developed over the past 25 years or so, and whether I should be holding on to these ideas or just letting go. I’m letting go of this one, however, it’s just been replaced with another ideal…
I’m going back to spinning to give it another go… it felt like more of a challenge.
