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My wife convinced me to do a new class at the gym that she hadn't tried before, and it would be my first class in about ten years. She said that according to the description, it should be more about strength. As you can imagine, this was always going to be a recipe for disaster. 

![IMG20240413131140 (1).jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/tarazkp/23x9wfNzYo66MRLQyD9Vi5Q8J7XxAi9Zp5apS3joAid21sYpbDhTuopmhETm7LFUaoBfH.jpg)

The gym app at this club is pretty good in my opinion, but it is probably because I have never gone to a gym with an app before. Prior to this one which we joined a year ago, I had been a member of the same gym for two decades, and while they might have had apps and the like, I must have been too old school to use them.

This was the first class I have been to at this gym, and I was looking  forward to doing something different and based on the overview, it was right up my alley. I am out of shape in the sense that my lungs are in atrocious condition due the asthma, but I am still pretty strong considering I lost a lot after the stroke, and not quite as, but still relatively flexible for a guy. 

![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/tarazkp/23tvAZoQ6T9gv4kJbVvctSR41ot2FuArvesHiGEhN8a2CmQkg8qw7qz1VkXKPp6u58XGn.png)

>This class is low cardio.

# Lie!

> This class is suitable for everyone.

# Lie!

> High intensity and strength.

# True. 

I got about 25 minutes in before my lungs gave out completely, and then I started to just do random pieces between my own things for the next ten minutes, before moving into stretching mode. The trainer came over to see if she should call an ambulance, or if I needed some of the elderly women in the class to carry me out to a couch to recover. 

> I exaggerate *slightly.* 

But, I didn't recover enough after the first 25 minutes to go on, so I ended up just stretching and rubbing my neck, which was in bad shape before entering into the class as it was. That is no excuse though, because the parts of my body that gave out, were my glutes which are strong but not up to repetition, and my lungs, which are shoddy. 

However, what was quite interesting about this experience was that despite not being able to do the class, I was also glad that I did it. More than that, as I was stretching and everyone else was laughing at me and my wife was shaking her head in second-hand embarrassment (in my head at least), I didn't really care. In the past, I would have cared far more, but now I have come to accept that despite what I used to be able to do, I am nowhere near that level now. I might be again someday, which is unlikely, but if I am to get there, it is going to be a lot of attempts that will be fails as a whole, but will be small steps in part that take me forward.  

As I was waiting for my wife to leave the gym, the instructor came up to me again to check if I was okay and once confirmed, asked if I would come back. I said "probably!" and weirdly, I meant it, because I think that it is good for me to push at least sometimes much harder than I am able to comfortably go, and get used to the taste of failure. But, perhaps if I keep it up, I will also get a whiff of some small successes and perhaps one day, be able to make it all the way through the session. 

While I got *very sweaty* considering the short time I was actually doing anything (sign of an approaching heart attack perhaps), I don't think I did enough to get that feeling of *doing enough* at the gym. However, there were indeed lessons learned, so even if there wasn't much potential for physical gains, maybe I made a step forward mentally and emotionally. 

So not an utter failure. 

*Small gains add up.*

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]

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