The Things I do for Juneathon: Circuits

Photo credit: PureGym

It’s still Juneathon, so I needed to find a class for this week. The only class that fitted in with other stuff this week was circuits and even that wasn’t ideal as I do yoga on a Wednesday morning (yes, I enjoyed it that much I’ve been back every week since, unlike Zumba, which I will never ever ever be doing again) which meant being in the gym for about sixteen hours (okay, two hours).

But, it’s Juneathon and I’m a) hardcore; and, more importantly, b) not a slacker and so I signed up for the circuits class and luckily it had stopped thundering and lightninging by the time I left the house (someone please tell the cat that though, as she’s been in her hiding place since the storms started in the early hours) and I cycled up to the gym, went on the rowing machine for a twenty minute warm-up and then stood outside the wrong part of the gym wondering why I was the only person there until some kind soul saw me from the right part of the gym and came and got me. Thank you, kind soul.

The instructor gave a quick run through of what we were going to be doing and I clearly wasn’t taking any notice because then it started and I thought what the fuck? but it was simple enough. You start at one exercise station and do stuff for a minute (it might have only been 30 seconds, I’m not sure) then move onto the next one. This is what we did (please excuse my non-technical terms for the things):

1. Kettlebells

This was straightforward enough. We (there are two of you at each exercise station) just had to do the squatty-swingy-kettlebell-through-the-legs-thing. I’m sure you know what I mean.

2. Heavy Round Holdalls

I have absolutely no idea what the name of these were but they were like heavy round holdalls you had to hold to your chest while doing squats.

Photo credit: PureGym

3. Medicine Balls

I’m assuming these were medicine balls but they weren’t like the rock-solid leather ones at school, these were soft and squidgy. Then again, I went to school in Victorian times so maybe soft and squidgy is the new rock-solid. We had to hold these above our heads, then slam them to the ground. ‘Throw it hard, not like you’re dropping an egg’, the instructor said as he saw my feeble effort.

4. Hexagonal Flippy Donut Thing

This was – as I’ve so eloquently described above – some kind of huge hexagonal (I think, it may have had eight sides. It’s not like I counted them) box with a hole in the middle and straps on the side that you had to ‘flip’ over and then the person on the other side flipped back to your side (trying not to kill each other in the process as who the fuck wants ‘Crushed by Hexagonal Flippy Donut Thing’ on their gravestone? Actually… that sounds quite cool.) I say ‘flip’ but in actual real life what happened was I kind of inelegantly hauled it up by the strap then kind of pushed it back over the other side. I wasn’t the only one – this thing was heavy and my exercise partner also struggled with the ‘flip’ side of things.

5. Plank

You all know what a plank is. I’m crap at planks. I didn’t manage the whole thirty seconds, unlike my exercise partner who did and it wasn’t even like she was a young gym bunny, I think she was probably older than me. Bah.

6. Upside-down Table Pushing Thing

While I’ve been on the rowing machine in the gym on previous occasions, I have seen people pushing this thing that looks like an upside-down table with a heavy weight on it and they have always made it look easy, so I assumed it was on wheels. It’s fucking not on wheels. I pushed it to the end of where we had to push it to then realised the exercise hadn’t started yet and I was the only one doing anything. Not embarrassing at all. But it just meant that I was more hardcore than anyone else because I did more, and I’m sure everyone else just thought I was more hardcore than them and not that I was a complete weirdo.

Photo credit: PureGym

7. AirBike

I’d been on the AirBike a few weeks ago after seeing a woman on it at the gym and I thought I’d give it a go. I don’t know whether I’d got on it just after someone who had the resistance ramped up to 11 had been on it or whether I was just a weed but it was brutal. Today wasn’t so brutal but that might have been because everything else so far had tried to kill me and so sitting on a bike for thirty seconds was a relief.

8. Pull Down Cable Things

This was another machine I’d seen people on before but hadn’t tried because… I’m not sure why, actually. Maybe it just looked a bit boring. It has two handles attached to cables high up above your head and you pull them down while squatting.

And then we had to do everything all over again. I was so knackered by this point and you’d think they’d decrease the weights but I think the fuckers increased everything because by the end of it I was done in. I had a great time though, the class was brilliant and I’ll definitely be doing it again but although I’d planned to do some more exercise in the half-hour between finishing circuits and doing yoga, all I had the energy to do was post on Facebook that I’d just done a circuits class and was dying.