Sometimes the warm-up includes lunges and biceps curls. We do dead rows and dead lifts, while standing in set position: bending at the hips, arching our backs, and raising and lowering our bars we straighten up and do upright lifts, switch our feet to a split stance and do overhead lifts place the bars behind our heads, onto our shoulders, and do squats. The instructor greets everyone and asks if anyone is new if so, she will spend a few minutes demonstrating correct set position, and walk the newbie through some of the moves. There are men in the class as well, of course (that would be the other one third…), and I’m sure other gyms even have male instructors, but here BodyPump seems to be dominated by women. Go to a weekday morning class, and the room is filled with moms whose kids are in school. Approximately two thirds of any given class is made up of women, ranging in age from college student to grandmother/retired college professor. There’s a rotation group of maybe eight instructors, all women.
The room holds about 40 people and their equipment usually there are twenty-some participants. We grab steps and risers-the plastic planks used in step aerobics, which we will use to lie on when we are working on chest or triceps- and also a selection of hand weights, barbells and additional weights, and a mat for push-ups and abdominal exercises. We file in, and being creatures of habit, start gathering our equipment and placing everything in the same quadrants of the room that we always occupy. The participants in the spinning class that just ended are filing out, dragging their stationary bikes with them my fellow BodyPumpers and I are lined up to take their place. I breeze in, show my i.d., pick up a towel, stow my belongings, and head to the large, mirrored classroom which houses the step equipment and weights.
I absolutely love the fact that my athletic club doesn’t smell like a locker room. The trip to the gym is short, and as I walk through the automatic doors, I am greeted by the most pleasant aroma-they’re baking something at the Trackside Café, and it smells good. Fifteen or twenty minutes before class time, I leave home.