Inspiration: Blind lady & Mismatched guy

Three mornings a week (very, very early) I teach a spinning class at a local gym.

My love of teaching goes back a long time, and I've been teaching fitness in one form or another since the early 90s. I actually started out teaching chair aerobics to senior citizens while living in Chicago.

My body hasn't always followed the cardiovascular fitness training I put myself through. Meaning that I deal with weight losses and gains like other people, however, I always feel good in knowing that my cardiovascular and muscle endurance is strong. I am grateful for that because I want to stick around this wonderful planet of ours for a long while with my family, friends, and loved ones. :-)

With that being said, there are mornings when I open my eyes in the per-dawn hours and all I want to do is roll over and go right back to sleep. But, I think about my students waiting for me in class. The fear of disappointing them makes me drag my sleepy butt out of bed. The fear of disappointing my ownself is also motivation, because I know that I never regret having worked out after the fact. It's just the lead-up that is hard.

The fear of letting someone down is not the only motivation for me to *get moving*. There are folks I encounter in my life at the gym who put me and my early morning "drag" to shame. More than that, they INSPIRE me.

The blind woman who struggled with obesity on and off for decades, then lost her sight in an accident. Only after her accident did she realize what her presence in the lives of her children and her family meant. They almost lost their mother, wife, sister, and friend to the accident, she didn't want to now die at 50 of a sudden heart attack. The heart is not built to sustain the prolonged stress of keeping an obese body alive. It is just too difficult, too demanding.

She is blind, but she has decided she would never be obese again. For years I've seen her at the gym here and there, learning through touch & instinct how to coordinate her body on one of the many exercise machines available to her. She has to arrive very early to get her exercise completed, because like me, she works at a desk for 10 hours a day.

I've seen her transform her body, and in the process, her perspective on life. I heard her once telling someone how she used to dream of wearing fashionable outfits when she was obese, but she's now in the best shape of her life and cannot see what she looks like in her size 8 jeans.

Every now and then we chat it up at the front desk. I overheard her telling another member that for her, there is no such thing as willpower. She doesn't believe in it and it never served her any purpose. She said all there is in life is action, and then there is inaction. She makes it a point to address the physical exercise needs of her living body every day, no matter what. She just takes ACTION.

Recently a man came into my spin class. It was his first time. He was born with an abnormality of his bones that were never treated, so as a result, one leg was shorter than the other, and his left ankle turned inward at a hard angle. His spine is also crooked. I wasn't sure that riding a bike would be the best thing for him, but he wanted to give it a try. After the warm-up song, he carefully got off his bike, thanked me for allowing him to try out the class, and said that I was right, his left ankle continuously scraped the side metal panel of the bike. He walked out.

After class, as I was leaving, I saw him on the rowing machine. He had worked up on an incredible sweat. I talked with him for a few minutes. He figured if his legs wouldn't allow him to get a hard cardio workout completed, then there was nothing wrong with his arms and torso. So, he'd do the rower for an hour in place of spinning or running or walking or climbing. He was tired of feeling tired all the time, he was tired of feeling sorry for himself and his "condition", and he was tired of making excuses for his inaction. So, he has become a rower and his arms have become really strong and buff in the last few weeks. Good for him.

No real reason for posting all of this, except to say that this morning was one of those mornings. I woke up and heard all of my boys sleeping soundly, the birds were chirping, and all I wanted to do was snuggle and go back to sleep.

Then I remembered blind lady and mismatched leg man.

With a deep sigh, I got up, packed up my stuff, drank a glass of water, and drove off in the dark morning traffic.

It was a solid, muscle crunching, sweaty class. My inner thighs and glutes felt like cooked noodles and my heart was a healthy monster machine at work. At the end of class, I didn't regret the workout.

The blind lady inspired me to just take action, not to roll over and go back to sleep.

The mismatched leg man inspired me to not make excuses.

And both of them inspired me to pray and to THANK GOD because I have eyes that see, legs that match, and energy & life to move. To make the decision to take action.

Sometimes in the thick of this thing called life, I take these simple blessings for granted.