crunch time

A crunch begins lying face up on the floor with knees bent. The movement initiates by curling the shoulders towards the pelvis. The hands can be behind or beside the neck or crossed over the chest. I prefer behind the head. It lends support and comfort. I would of course prefer not to be here at all. I would prefer a bed and feather soft pillow, to the scratchy hardness of the floor or at least a lazy boy by the pool.

I lie here thinking of pina coladas and banana daiquiris by a resort pool in some far off exotic location….I flex my feet and place my hands under my head in readiness…..I can smell my deodorant doing a halfhearted job to mask the earthier scent of my morning workout…I think about bed again, what I could have had for breakfast…

Unlike the sit-up, in a proper crunch, the lower back stays on the floor. This is said by scientific literature to eliminate any involvement by the hip flexors, and make the crunch an effective isolation exercise for the abdominals…

I wriggle my spine and try in vain to let it sink further into the floor, oh the disgrace of a bow back….the exercise instructor looks sideways at me and I try to smile…letting the imagined smell of pancakes, strawberries and cream, calm me…

At least I am lying down, before we got to this supine moment I had been bending, stretching, jogging, oscillating my hips and gyrating bits I had forgotten existed whilst all the while looking nonchalant and trying to keep an impossible rhythm with the Zumba instructor….

“Open your legs ladies, push harder, bend those knees, down further, further” …was I really the only one who wondered at the choice of words and slightly chuckled with embarrassment…perhaps it was just that Latin accent….I smirked in memory of my discordant attempts to look even slightly coordinated on the Zumba floor….there was a time I believed I could dance….whose idea was this any way??

But yes, at least I am lying down now….and its crunch time……first the twisting crunch, this is performed by lifting one shoulder at a time. More emphasis is placed on the obliques apparently…and now the bicycle crunch which  is a variation of the twisting crunch performed by bringing together alternating elbows and knees, resulting in a leg motion similar to pedaling a bicycle. The bicycle crunch is the most effective in targeting the rectus abdominis, I clear my throat rather self-consciously….and the obliques….. I groan, at first quietly, on the inside, and then shamefully a little more loudly, on the outside, rather like a pre-earthquake rumbling…..

So why am I here again? Oh yes, summertime is fast approaching and so is my swim suit, and the thought of squeezing, pushing and wriggling myself back in to it has made squeezing , pushing and wriggling my way through exercise class far more appealing…oh yes, its crunch time!!