The Advent of a Really Hard Workout

As Advent begins, leading to the season of Peace and Joy, I figure it’s as good a time as any to shake things up a bit.

Before Thanksgiving, I had been considering starting yoga, but on Monday I went to a “Body Combat” class instead, and now I’m hooked. Left hook, right hook, just plain hooked. Something about having the kids here for a spell and taking in all the changes happening with each one of them—well, it just makes me want to get out there and go for it rather than sit quietly and reflect. Not that yoga isn’t really demanding in its own way, of course. And besides, what I heard the instructor say during the class (how she can talk right through the exertions is amazing) exactly matched what I needed to hear, even outside the gym.

According to the exercise company called Les Mills http://www.lesmills.com/workouts/fitness-classes/bodycombat/ that designs and promotes these workouts for clubs everywhere, “BODYCOMBAT™ is the empowering cardio workout where you are totally unleashed.”

Unleashed. If it’s good for my dog, and one glimpse of him running through a field is evidence enough, then it must be good for me, too. At certain junctures in life, don’t we need to try to find out what exactly is even inside us TO unleash? I do, anyway, right now and right here.

This person isn’t me — she’s a tad younger and I don’t even have boxing gloves — but doesn’t she look cool? And fully in the moment?

Much of this workout, the one that I’m now planning on doing regularly, incorporates boxing moves, both for arms and legs. There’s no actual equipment, like heavy bags or speed bags, and — phew — no actual opponents. But you can feel like you might be in the ring, and this gets the adrenaline flowing. In a good way, I think. The fact that our older son coaches kids who are just learning to box (the moves without the actual sparring) in New York City definitely is a positive influence. He says that with a little time going to my new class, I’ll soon be ready to travel down there and try the one he does for mothers in Harlem.

So why is this just the right time to start punching and kicking while hitting no one?

Since our kids pulled out after several days at home, they’ve left everything, mostly my own mind, still vibrating. These three empty peanut butter jars on the counter are, in a way, strangely full, reminding me of what was and also what is now.

Thanksgiving is over, but the important remnants are not so much the leftovers in the fridge (gone days ago) but are more like scraps of oriental rugs, the colorful impressions each individual leaves that say, “Here’s where I am in my life; behold!”

Watching some videotape of family scenes when the kids were young, I remembered how much organizing, watching, protecting, guiding, and yes, plenty of directing we did as parents in those days. Sound familiar? We were shepherding them a whole lot of the time, often even when we were enjoying their antics. This wasn’t bad, of course; it was pretty normal and necessary. After all, they were darling, just beginning to make their way, and they needed us. They twirled and climbed and played their instruments on stage, and we beamed, ready to catch them or applaud, or both.

Now though, for many of us, a whole different tape is playing. Our kids are away from us most of the time, swooping in occasionally to resume being our kids, except they’re mostly not so much our kids as their own completely individual forces now, deciding all kinds of things on their own, choosing their paths and the people they want to be with or don’t want to be with, going forth, finding their own jars of peanut butter (or wishing they could, at a nut-free school). There’s nothing more appropriate than this, and yet sometimes it can leave parents re-defining their own directions, too.

How much engaging do we do now, how much backing off, how much diving into our very own lives, almost like—but yes, also different from– the ones we had before having kids?

And here’s why the words of wisdom from the “Body Combat” instructor the other day made so much sense, and why I’ll be sure to seek them again. Sure, she probably just tossed these lines out to provide key transitions for us laborers on the floor, but I heard more.

“Change is coming!” she warned, before the routine took us through a major shift, maybe from scissor kicks to jabs.

“You have choices!” she declared, giving us a couple of different options in the kind of push-ups we could do during a certain segment.

Talk about hitting me where I live. This unleashing business is not your typical Advent activity, doesn’t have much to do with waiting; but for this pastor’s wife anyway, it works. I can already tell that Christmas will be a whole lot more beautiful, not to mention powerful, this year.