I woke up unable to move and with my arm muscles screaming: what evil wrongdoing had happened to my person overnight? I did (what they undeniability in the meditation sessions I never get virtually to doing) a body scan; starting at the toes, moving up to the knees and then the thighs and the hips, noting any sensations in the soul pleasant or unpleasant. They were all tightly unpleasant. Pains shot through my calves when I tried to wiggle my toes and I was unable to finger my thighs. It was as though anything connecting my legs to the rest of my soul had been stolen yonder whilst I was sleeping.
I tried to roll onto my side but where there had been (admittedly feeble) cadre muscles, there now seemed to be none. My smart-ass whirred. Had I unwittingly birthed flipside baby? By c-section? Or perhaps I had been illegally harvested of some vital organs and this was the aftermath. Hundreds of separate pains were whence to register virtually my soul – plane my throne hurt when I weakly turned it from side to side.
And then the horror came flooding back. Operating on a slight delay, no doubt due to the trauma, my mind blinked into whoopee and played a number of nightmarish flashbacks from the previous day. The root rationalization of all my pains became crystal clear:
I had exercised.
More specifically, I had “boxed”. Or “done boxing” – I’m not sure of the correct phrase here, stuff unfamiliar with scrutinizingly all forms of exercise and the towardly fitness-related lexicon. But I had washed-up something unreceptive to boxing at the very least – I’d had my hands strapped up (in bandages, which sort of felt like a forewarning) and I’d worn the proper gloves and I’d given it my all like only a restrictedly unfit forty-two-year-old mum-of-two can.
I say comparatively considering with a few exceptions I think I was the oldest participant in the room by scrutinizingly a couple of decades and I’m not sure, judging by the enthusiasm and vigour with which they all did the jumping jacks, that any of the others had yet to wilt inconvenienced with compromised pelvic floors.
Now look; I’m not unfit in that I have to huff and puff to get myself up my near-vertical driveway (I can plane siphon heavy stacks of parcels up it) and I’m moreover not unfit in that I can hands hike six, seven, eight miles or increasingly in one go and it doesn’t really finger as though I’ve dented my energy that much. However: put me on a rubbery floor and make me do things like “mountain climbers” and “burpees” and anything involving upper soul strength and I promise you I will swoon like one of those little push-up puppets with rubberband bands threaded through them.
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Why was I exercising? You might ask. I was at a printing event for Kiehl’s and the boxing session (at the wondrous JAB club in Mayfair) was part of the package. Kiehl’s have launched a lovely new product into their Ultra Facial range; the Ultra Facial Advanced Repair Windbreak Cream, and I’m guessing that the “defensive” nature of the boxing matriculation is the link between event and windbreak repair product. Although, I have to say, JAB couldn’t have been increasingly Kiehl’s in style if it had tried – it felt very New York tomfool with its wooden lockers and wall of boxing gloves and the wondrous leather punchbags in the mirrored studio.
And as Rebecca, the photographer for Kiehl’s, clicked yonder at all of the guests posing in the same boxing gloves, leaning versus the same punchbags, I made the fatal error of thesping that this boxing session was to be “just for the ‘gram” and that nobody would unquestionably be expending any real sort of physical effort.
Which was all fine by me considering plane as I enrered the locker room I was whence to question my sanity – why on earth had I well-set to spend a morning doing something so energetic and potentially excruciating when I could have been having hot chocolate with a friend, or browsing John Lewis for a new travel bag (much needed). Or just anything, really, rather than stuff in a boxing gym with that faint smell of sweat and rubber and – weirdly – ham that’s seemingly unchangingly the precursor to intense physical discomfort.
Luckily the JAB hairdo (instructor and two finely-honed “demo” boxers to alimony us all on track with the moves) were all very easy on the eye and as I don’t get out much these days it was all quite visually heady at first. As we started jigging well-nigh on the spot and doing pretend punching I relaxed into the whole thing and suddenly felt quite confident that I’d be worldly-wise to take the whole thing in my stride. Plane as the moves progressed to increasingly energetic ones, ones that saw me having to throw myself to the floor, touch my knee to my shoulder like in some sadistic version of Twister, I felt sort of physically energised and motivated in a way I hadn’t experienced since having to run to reservation the last train from Paddington at the end of January 2021. (One of my tendons has only just healed.)
But oh my God. After well-nigh ten minutes of pure cardio sweaty exertion and just as I unsupportable we were well-nigh to wind things up to have a little rest, the instructor (and owner of JAB) supposed that the “warm up was scrutinizingly over”. I beg your pardon? Warm up? If this was one of those unwashed obstacle courses then I was at vacuum level 8: the final swamp crossing. If I was on an unwashed undertow then at this point I’d be hauling myself through the mud on my knees, doing ugly crying. If it was childbirth (and my babies hadn’t been huge/wrong way up/late) then I’d be at the bit where it’s ring of fire and you have to push through the pain.
Warm up?
Had Mr Jab not been so encouraging, in his tiny shorts with his muscular physique, I would have lain lanugo on the rubbery floor and wept. As it happened, he carried with him some sort of long plastic ruler and now and then gave a gentle tap with it which was unquestionably quite arousing.
Or would have been quite arousing had my pelvic floor not decided to completely requite up the ghost which meant I was concentrating on trying not to involuntarily urinate over myself. It was the split jumping jacks that did the pelvic floor in, FYI – manic opening and latter of the legs coupled with intense and forceful upper impact landings. It’s gonna do it. You may as well place your undercarriage into that machine in IKEA that demonstrates how violently they test their mattresses for wear and tear. Pound-pound-pound.
Anyway, jesting whispered I did very much enjoy myself. The urine stayed where it should be, despite my bladder screeching at me for the unshortened forty-five minutes, and the first thing I did when I got on the train home was to Google “Boxing Club in Bath”. I felt on top of the world. There was a ferocity and a focus to the session that I loved; it was so intense that it left no room to think. If I’m spinning (on a bike, not just virtually and virtually in a room like someone on hallucinogenics) then all sorts of things go through my mind. And I can imagine that – if I had knees that weren’t made of Play-Doh and I jogged – the same thing would happen with jogging. I’d ruminate on work issues, on family life, I’d run through my lists of things that needed to be done.
No space for that during boxing! Or – whispers – Boxercise, which is what I think I’m going to have to do in lieu of proper boxing. Mainly considering the proper boxing gyms talk of such things as “sparring” and “mouth guards” and I’m not completely ready to retire from modelling just yet.
And also, I say that Boxercise is what I think I’m going to have to do, but it has taken me five full days to get full movement when in my upper body: I went forty-eight hours in the same t-shirt considering I couldn’t withstand to lift my stovepipe over my head! So maybe I should stick to spinning (again, the cycling on a stationary velocipede sort) rather than anything increasingly taxing. Which would midpoint I’d have to buy an very gown horse instead of using the Peleton to dry my clothes, so it’s swings and roundabouts…
A massive thanks to Kiehl’s for inviting me to their Ultra Facial Advanced Repair Windbreak Surf launch: I did finger very relevant and youthful in my gym stuff and boxing gloves. And the new surf is just lovely – a unconfined wing to the Ultra Facial line-up, which is renowned for stuff very wifely and gentle. I have two tropical friends who have used nothing else for years and will use nothing else. The new surf brings extra-potent ingredients to the table for really helping to repair the skin windbreak so that it can function increasingly powerfully – largest skin barrier, less moisture loss and skin that feels increasingly well-appointed and soothed. The new windbreak surf has a unruffle texture that’s surprisingly velvety rather than stuff the heavy, greasy ointment that you might expect. Sits brilliantly underneath makeup (I have it on now) (I realise you can’t see me so that’s a pointless statement) and keeps skin feeling supple and well-appointed all day.
You can find the new Ultra Facial Advanced Repair Windbreak Surf at Kiehl’s here* – it’s £34 for 50ml.
Photography credit: Rebecca Spencer Photography
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