Fat Woman goes to Boxercise

Fat Woman has been going to BoxFit at her gym since April. At first Personal Trainer protected Fat Woman, but now Fat Woman holds her own in both boxing and mat work. Fat Woman is still awfully slow when it comes to running, but that may pass. Fat Woman loves nothing more than to spend the best part of an hour doing hard and fast pad work cut with some killer mat work. Fat Woman is still surprised that she thinks like that, but she's rolling with it.

Tiny Friend has been an absolutely marvellous gym buddy for Fat Woman. Tiny Friend has been paying a second gym subscription since Personal Trainer was no longer able to sign her in. This works out at £9.25 a class. Understandably, Tiny Friend wondered if perhaps there was another class that both she and Fat Woman could try. Fat Woman wasn't keen, but thought it was only fair that she be open to the suggestion. There are rules of reciprocity governing friendship after all.

Tiny Friend and Fat Woman got up on a Sunday morning to go to a 10am Boxercise class at the local community centre. Fat Woman was reasonably keen because the night before Thin Husband had taken her out for a fabulous dinner and she had eaten quite a lot.

The community centre has been much improved since Fat Woman was last therein 2007, although the receptionist - a middle-aged man with the most put-upon attitude Fat Woman has seen in a while - was not the brightest spark. The receptionist was insistent that Fat Woman and Tiny Friend had to do this, and come back to him, then do that, and come back to him. Fat Woman thought it was inefficient but suspects he couldn't cope with compound tasks. Fat Woman feels like that when she's been drinking the night before.

Boxercise class was held in the sports hall. The hall was host to six badminton courts, a basketball court, an indoor football court, a netball court and possibly a hockey pitch. Fat Woman was trying to decipher the markings laid out in different coloured tape. The Boxercise instructor made sure everyone made good use of the hall, which was lucky because he certainly didn't give anyone a chance to make much use of their pads or gloves.

After a ten minute warm up of jogging around the hall the instructor got everyone to do two jabs, one after the other, Fat Woman assumed he was warming everyone up and soon they would be punching away. Fat Woman made no issue with the instructions on how to punch one pad after the other, how the pad man should say "One-Two" and put the pads down afterwards, although she could practically hear Personal Trainer not saying anything in the special way he does. The instructions on where to hold your hands when you weren't punching were just shocking. Fat Woman is the first to admit that she has a lazy right arm, and has been hit on the head for it, but she fails to see what good your hands will do if you rest them on your boobs.

That was it. One-Two. Then Three-Four. This was two high hooks. That was IT for the entire class.

No combinations.

No sit-ups.

No rounds.

No uppercuts.

Fat Woman was BORED. Usually when Fat Woman leaves BoxFit class she feels she's had a great workout and needs a shower. In Boxercise the only reason Fat Woman broke a sweat at all was because the instructor got the pad men to stand in different parts of the hall and made the boxers run between them. If Fat Woman wanted to go running she'd go running. Fat Woman doesn't want to pay £5 and get up on a Sunday morning to go running. Fat Woman certainly doesn't want to go running hampered by a pair of boxing gloves.

Tiny Friend is now satisfied that the gym BoxFit class is worth the financial investment for her.

Fat Woman thinks it was worth £5 to be able to sneer forever at Boxercise classes and be able to refuse to go ever again. Fat Woman considered it would have been worth another £5 to have the experience of being too fit for a class billed as "hardcore".

Tiny Friend let Fat Woman go to the car boot sale afterwards as a reward for not telling the instructor how rubbish his class was and that he was a coward for not letting Fat Woman give him a pair of hooks.