The Barre Bro Goes 1v1 Against Molly Misery

The day job’s been busy lately so I haven’t had much time to work out, but work finally slowed down this week so I could take real lunch breaks again. At the same time, this bro somehow managed to gain 8 lbs. between Saturday and Tuesday, which means it’s time to get back at it. I knew it would be a mistake to jump right back into barre because, in a cruel twist of irony, barre uses a lot of body weight exercises, meaning that extra 8 lbs. would make any barre class I went to much harder than it was 8 lbs. ago.

I did manage to go low carb on some free sandwiches at work yesterday, but that didn’t move the needle on the scale that night so I decided to do a double yoga day, with Callie’s 6am in the morning, and Molly’s 11:45am yoga sculpt. First, let me say that I hate the word combination “yoga sculpt.” At best, it’s a shitty fusion – yoga, something that in my mind should be a nice, relaxing, non-challenging, non-sweating stretching affair, combined with sculpting, which is something that happens in sweaty weight rooms. At worst, it’s an oxymoron, kind of like “salad buffet” or “clean coal.” But hey, at least it’s not barre, right?

I go to class, and to my dismay I discover that I’m the only one signed up! Now, there are plenty of situations where it’s great to be the only person there. All-you-can-eat buffet on crab leg night? Hell yeah. The Costco sample stand when mini corn dogs are on sample? I’ll take five, thank you. Buying a large McDonald’s fries without the threat of spousal french fry theft? What a relief to be alone in that situation.

There are other situations where being the only one there is the worst. The first 45 minutes of a horror movie as a minority? Dead. Applying sunscreen? Not a one-player game. Taking a dump in a public restroom and realizing you didn’t check to make sure there’s toilet paper? Is there even a way out of that? (Yes, but it’s not pretty…)

Yoga sculpt falls into that second category – it’s great if you can hide out in a class of 12, but awful if you’re the Only. One. There. It’s even worse when you know that Molly’s been itching to have me come to her class just so she could torture me, that little sadist. Now that I think about it, most of our teachers are little sadists, and I’m like a crash test barre dummy that they like to experiment on. This is not the face of someone who’s about to teach a chill yoga class.

The worst part about this class? Molly totally set me up to think that this was going to be an awesome, relaxing, no-sweat yoga class when we began the class with this:

And then this:

Basically, all the good shit that happens at the end of most yoga classes came at the beginning, kind of like starting a meal with dessert.. But soon thereafter, the sadist came out.

First, she made me do FUCKING ABS. I hate abs. Remember, abs are supposed to be a supple container, not a muscle.

Meanwhile Molly’s in front of me perched up on a bolster like Pai Mei from Kill Bill –

The rest of the class was a painful blur, and it seemed like I spent most of it in some sort of plank situation with three or fewer limbs in contact with the ground. It really sucked, but it made me respect the hell out of tripods. I hope my enemies are reincarnated into inanimate tripods, just sitting there holding up heavy cameras for indefinite periods of time. Also, three-legged dog is kind of a sad name for a yoga pose, isn’t it? Why not peeing dog so the dog isn’t permanently disabled?

I usually have one goal during morning/lunch yoga classes – don’t sweat, because you have to go back to work. By that standard, I failed miserably – I can’t remember the last time I sweat this much in a yoga class. If barre is like taking a blowtorch to your muscles, Molly’s yoga class was like being a wet towel being twisted until moisture just drips off.

I don’t think this next one is even a real yoga pose – I’m pretty sure Molly was just fucking with me at this point. She didn’t even bother making up a Sanskrit name for it, she was just like, “Hands behind your head, now pull your elbows back, yup, stand on one foot, now stick the other one out to the side. Yup, that’s the pose, slinky-warrior-descending-staircase.” If Molly ever gets tired of teaching barre/yoga, she has a bright future designing field sobriety tests.