My new year’s resolutions didn’t last long this year. March, maybe. Or February. OK, Feb. 9.
I know because they ended while I was watching Kendrick Lamar’s super-aerobic Super Bowl halftime show. I promised myself, kicked back with a sack of tortilla chips, guacamole and margaritas, that I would absolutely POSITIVELY resume my resolutions and start getting Lamar fit the next day. Then it was March, maybe. OK, July 26.
I know because by then, it was clear at my annual checkup that my resolutions hadn’t lasted long this year. The doctor confirmed it, frowning at my charts. The same doctor who’d confirmed the year before that chips, guacamole and margaritas were not, technically, part of a “Mediterranean Diet.’’
“I don’t know how anyone even survives on what you eat,’’ he said. “As for exercise, find something you like to do and just stick with it.’’
Putting down chips, guacamole and margaritas would be easy, I said. Football season was still weeks away – easy fix! At least until preseason.
As for exercise, I’d had trouble keeping my resolutions because I’d been trying to keep them by doing the same old, same old things. Running on a treadmill. Riding a bike. Opening sacks of chips, avocados and tequila bottles and calling it part of a “Mexican Diet.”
So I resolved that if I was ever going to keep my resolutions, I had to try something completely different. Something I hadn’t tried before. Something that might keep me interested long enough to keep my resolutions. At least until the new year when I could make up and ignore some new ones.
Maybe Pilates, I said, pulling the name of an exercise out of the blue. I’d never tried that before – I wasn’t even sure how to pronounce it. Puh-la-teez, I said, sounding it out. It sounded austere, repentant, painful.
Asking around, though, I started hearing good things.
“Pain is not a regular thing in Pilates for me at least AND over time my core strength has increased,’’ one friend said.
“I LOVE Pilates!” said another. “It’s been so good for me.”
“I recently started Pilates and LOVE it,’’ said a third.
It was clear people I knew who’d tried Pilates had come away pleased with the experience. Except for the apparent side effect of uppercasing words in sentences.
They convinced me to give it a try and, as it just so happened, renowned Pilates instructor Nofar Hagag herself was teaching a Pilates class that week at her studio in Miami Beach. I figured I might as well go full on into the unknown with an instructor with a roster of well-known students.
“If you haven’t tried Nofar Method yet, this is your chance to see why it’s gained a cult following in both New York and Miami among names like Karlie Kloss, Emily Ratajkowski and Brooke Shields,” a spokesperson for the Nofar Method said. “Known for its unique 50-minute format that combines 25 minutes on the Reformer and 25 on the Cadillac, it delivers an intense, full-body workout that’s both refined and transformative.”
Any exercise that involved supermodels and 25 minutes on a Cadillac seemed like something I could stick with. But I stood in the hallway outside the door of Nofar’s second-floor studio on Washington Avenue not sure I should go in. Everybody coming out of her class looked preternaturally fit. Supermodelesque. Whereas I looked like I’d just set down a sack of chips.
But Nofar could not have been nicer, welcoming me in.
“Each class is created to meet you exactly where you are, whether you’ve been active your whole life or are just starting your fitness journey,” she said, reassuringly.
I followed her into a room that appeared to contain the beds they give kids in summer camps, only with four metal posts on each corner that supported parallel bars with springy straps hanging down. These were the Reformers.
She then took the preternaturally fit class of six – and me – through various stretching movements, first on my back, then on my knees, then in various standing positions with the springy straps. I was soon sweating a lot but, somehow, keeping up with them. At one point, I even played catch across one of the Reformers with a classmate – and we were the only two people who didn’t drop the big heavy ball. Ha! I can hang with the preternaturals!
After 25 minutes, we exchanged the room with the Reformers for a room with the Cadillacs, which I was disappointed to find looked more like rowing machines than luxury cars. We spent another 25 sweaty minutes on those, working on balance and resistance training.
“I don’t get it,” I said to Nofar. “I made it through class, and I don’t feel any pain! I took a spinning class a few years ago, and I couldn’t move afterward.”
“Pilates isn’t about exhausting your muscles to the point of soreness,” she said. “What’s most important is that your body feels safe and happy moving during the class, which is the foundation for transformation.”
It did. I do. I LOVE Pilates! (Uppercasing words is a side effect.)
So much so that I was re-inspired to resume all of my new year’s resolutions. Going to Pilates. Running on the treadmill. Riding my bike. I was on a roll.
Until the morning I rolled off my bike, fell and spectacularly skinned both knees. I’d been balancing in my driveway, waiting for an Amazon fulfillment truck to pass in the street, and I just toppled over. (I never do that! I blamed Jeff Bezos.)
There went biking. There went running. There went Pilates, since fully functioning knees are essential on the Reformers and the Cadillacs.
There went my resolutions that didn’t last long for a third time this year.
But now’s the time we start to think about resolutions for the new year. And I’ve already resolved to make mine happen, starting Jan. 1. Maybe in time for halftime with Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl in February, latest.
OK, maybe March. POSITIVELY.
-mgauert@cityandshore.com
