Phoning it in

Do you get annoyed when you come to a workout, ready to give it all your effort, and you are surrounded by people who seem to not care?

I found myself in that position at a recent boot camp class.  Two women in front of me, probably in their mid 20's, spent much of the class giggling to one another and generally not doing the workout.

START -- 100 jumping jacks.  I get to work.  One-and-two-and-three-and-four-and.....  And I'm starting to break a sweat.  Our two cutesy crop-pants-wearing friends do a few lacksadaisical slow jumping jacks.  When I'm counting fifty jumping jacks to myself, I see them stop and move on to the next exercise, which is supposed to be 50 sit-ups.

I bang out my situps.  One, roll up, two, roll, three, and so forth.  These two chicks slowly roll up, tousle their hair, one stops for like two minutes to fix the perfect pony tail.  They did, maybe, 20 of the 50 situps.  Followed by 40 mountain climbers, of which they each did about 10.  Then 30 squats by which each of these girls might have lowered her rear end about six inches toward the ground, possibly a total of six times. Then 20 push-ups, and I think each of them did 5-10 exercises that involved a slight bend in the elbows, before doing two or three of the ten thrusters that they were supposed to do, and finally followed by about 15 seconds of what should have been a minute long plank,in which one of the "planks" involved an ass way up in the air and resembled nothing of a plank.

It is nearing the twenty minute mark, I am sweating and finishing off a final 100 jumping jacks.  These two girls have been standing around for 5 minutes, I think they may have done a yoga pose or two to stretch and then walked over to check their cell phones for the remainder of the time.

Should I care what these two lazy twenty-something girls in front of me are doing?

The problem is, I do care.  And it annoys me, that I am working my ass off to get results, and they're barely making an effort.

Now, my point is not to mock people who aren't in shape.  I am mocking the people who don't care to try, who don't push themselves.  My point is that if you come to a fitness class, you should put in the effort.

So why does this bother me?  After all, I'm here at bootcamp for myself.  I'm not here to facilitate anyone else's workout.  Perhaps it's because I come to a class to have others push me, and watching others not put in the effort does not inspire in the least.

I look in the mirror at myself.  I'm fit.  I get results because I WORK HARD.  When I come to work out, I give everything I have.  Your body gains little if anything by half-assing a workout.

For me, I have to remember, I'm here for my workout.  I have to find the people who inspire ME and stick with them.  I find those types of people on Fortius Racing.  I find them at master swim workouts.  And sometimes I find them at my bootcamp classes, and when I see them, I stick with them.  I watch what they do.  I try to keep up, do more.  Because they push me, and hopefully I push them too.