The injury from last week seem to have healed up completely now. I played it safe and rested for five full days. I always find it hard to determine when it is safe to try exercising again. Initially the healing proceeds rapidly, but after a couple of days the healing process seem to come to a complete halt where it feels like most of the pain is gone but there is still this awkward stiffness which may or may not indicate that the injury is not fully healed yet. So I figure that all I can do in this situation is hold on for a couple days and then take a chance that the pain will not come back when I try exercising again. This time, last Wednesday, I was happy to find that the last bit of stiffness seemed to float away during the Core Pulse session.

The real test for my bad back came from the strength session I did today. While I felt a bit stiff after the workout, it is a different kind of stiffness, not like the pain I suffered last week. I take it that muscle soreness from strength training feels a bit different from the soreness you get from running or Group Training? In any case, this stiffness seem to be easing off as I type this. I was able to increase my weights again for the third week in a row and it seems I have developed a sort of awareness of how much I can lift for each exercise, which means I can go straight from my warm-up set to the correct weights for the work set.

As a result from not exercising for a few days, that Core Pulse session sure hit my thighs and glutes pretty hard. Haven’t had this much soreness in my leg-muscles in six months. So today I went to the lunch-time Core Pulse session thinking I would take it a bit easier this time. But as usual, anytime I go to Sats Jakobsberg with this mind-set the instructors seem to over-do themselves and inspire me to push myself to my limits. Today’s session got me thinking how different the instructors are in terms of how they create “Focus” for the group. “Focus” in this case, for lack of a better expression, is my term for the “energy” or “fighting spirit” or “atmosphere” created by that feeling that everyone around you, including yourself and the instructor, is really pushing themselves and enjoying their workout. It’s quite obvious to me that most instructors are reflective, in the sense that they seem to reflect the Focus expressed by the group, instructing with more energy if the group is expressing that they are enjoying themselves. And I would assume that most people who enjoy Group Fitness are reflective as well, so one could assume that it would not take much effort to get a good wibe flowing in the classroom. But this is not the case always, and the question I ask myself is why?

The answer I think lies in how perceptive the instructors and the participants are to the reflective signals they are getting from the group and how we perceive this concept of Focus. Some instructors like to keep a two-way verbal communication going during the class, with the usual “Are you with me?” and with everyone expected to answer with a resounding “YES!”, while other instructors communicate true non-vocal, almost empathic, communication. My assumption is that people respond to these different forms of communication differently depending on their personality and other influences. For instance, men tend to respond positively to vocal communication, especially in the presence of attractive women. :-P

While I do also respond to verbal communication, as a typical introvert I sometimes find it awkward. In fact, it sometimes feels forced, as if I am expected to respond to every queue and shout simply because I am a man. I even get the feeling that when I am not responding to the verbal communication, this causes the women to stay silent as well for whatever reason (Cultural norm? Gender-based shyness?). As a man, I obviously don’t know what happens with the communication when the class consist entirely of women so I can’t really know if this feeling I have is true or not. Sometimes I get the feeling that the instructors like seeing me there in their class for the very reason that I am a man but sometimes the feeling is the opposite. I really don’t know what conclusions to build out of this.

What I do know is that during today’s class the verbal communication was minimal. The instructor just sort of radiated energy, and I don’t believe I was the only one to pick up on it. And it’s a good thing the communication wasn’t verbal, I was working way too hard to have been able to shout a single word, even if I wanted to. But I would assume that the veins bursting on my forehead would communicate just plenty about how much I was pushing myself in case the instructor would need some kind of reassurance.

And this is exactly where our perception of the concept of Focus comes into play. Some instructors often say things like: “You all look so angry, where are the smiles?” and while that might be meant to be sarcastic, I sometimes feel that maybe they expect you to sort of look like a show dancer or something. But that just feels so weird. This is not a Dance Aerobics class we are talking about here. If I am truly enjoying a Power Step/Core Pulse/Spinning/Body Pump session, I will have my fighting face on. And that is not a happy face.