Why Pilates this Year?

I’m not making New Year’s Resolutions. Since this year’s “resolutions” are pretty much the same as last year, I’d rather just call them recommitments. Among those recommitments is maintaining what I generously call my physique. Some may say that I would have to establish a decent physical form before maintaining it. To them, I say, “Take your wit and . . . well, you have a good point.”

There were a couple of events that occurred during 2009 that did not help me reach my goal of Herculean strength. First, I played too many video games. I did not curtail my hours of open-mouthed, catatonic staring; this year will be different. Second, I dropped my rock climbing gym membership. That left a void that I have filled with Pilates DVDs. Why Pilates? Well, if you eliminate everything else using my list of criteria, that’s what you’re left with.

When choosing an activity that will shape a graduate student’s body, there are many limitations. 1) It’s got to be cheap because I make less than a kindergarten teacher. 2) It’s best if it can be done at night because lab beckons all day. 3) It has to be relatively safe because I am like fine China: extremely fragile. 4) It cannot be repetitive because I can’t stand doing the same motion over and over—call it mental weakness if you want, all of you bikers, runners, and swimmers; I’m OK with that.

Cheap. High start-up or recurring costs are prohibitive. It is one of the reasons I stopped my climbing gym membership, which cost about $600 per year. This criterion also eliminates golf, biking, skiing, wakeboarding, sky-diving, and most types of classes with any decent instruction.

Convenient. Being in lab all day is optional, but given that I am nearing the end of my grad student life (hopefully), being in lab most of the day is pretty necessary. That means working out has to happen at night if it is going to happen at all. That was one of the appealing characteristics of climbing. I could eat an early dinner and then head to the gym. Of course, there are night leagues, but that brings me to the next criterion.

Safe. I could play football, but if you’ve ever seen a bowling ball fall on a twig . . . I’m the twig. Given my long history of breaking bones, I prefer something with little chance of hospitalization. Activities that are eliminated by this include team sports with any degree of contact: rugby, football, hockey, soccer, tag team wrestling, or baseball (what if the ball hits me?). Yes, you might call me wimpy, girly, or unmanly, but I call it knowing my limits and drawing conclusions based on a large sample size of data (Six broken bones).

Repetitive sports. Finally, anything that is repetitive is just plain boring (and maybe slightly painful) to me. It really makes it difficult for me to start exercising. OK, it also makes it difficult for me to keep going once I have started. And when I’m done, I don’t feel great that I did it. I just feel relieved that I don’t have to do it again for awhile. That means any event in a triathlon, except for the changing of clothes, is something I’d rather avoid. And if changing clothes occurred repeatedly over a thirty minute time span (or four hours), I would probably avoid that part, too.

What I am left with is Pilates DVDs. They fulfill all the criteria. For now, my New Year will begin with cheap, convenient, safe, and non-repetitive Pilates DVDs. I’ll take some pictures in the future so you can see the results. Or not—I don’t want to deter you from reading the blog in the future.