Changing Generational Legacy
A lot of valuable principles have been passed down my family line over the generations, such as hard work, honesty, integrity, responsibility, education, creativity and so on. However, absent from both family lines was the value of exercise.
Growing up, I was not allowed to go to any kinds of classes for fitness, be it dance, gymnastics or sports. Partially that was due to finances but I was also taught that sports is stupid, serves no purpose and only causes injury.
As I got into my teen years, I would sometimes be seen jogging or biking for the sole purpose of losing weight, never for the fun or health benefits of it. In school I hated P.E. and the competition that came with it. Whenever there was a competition of any kind in P.E. I pretty much shut down. I hated to break a sweat and never enjoyed P.E.
In my college years I started biking for transportation purposes which kept me pretty fit, although the reason I did it was to save time and burn calories.
When I got married, I tried the gym where my husband used to work out. I would go and work out legalistically for a while and then give up and start up again then give up once more. I tried different times in the day and found out that mornings were going to have to be it for me if I was going to be consistent. We got a treadmill and I started running before work, adding some weight exercises out of fitness magazines; it didn’t last. I taped workout shows off the TV and did them in the morning; it didn’t last. I tried several different workout sets advertised on TV; it was great while it lasted. Nothing kept my interest. Then I got pregnant with my first child and gained a lot of weight in the first trimester. Knowing something had to change I started walking in the neighborhood every day. I kept this up for all of the pregnancy and started up again 2 weeks postpartum. Maybe it was because I was home full time now, but somehow I worked in a schedule of doing weights with DVDs for 3 days a week and successfully lost all the pregnancy weight and 40lbs on top of that.
Then one day I realized that I was not feeling worked out hard any more. I wasn’t soaking wet anymore after my workouts and realized I needed something new. That’s when I decided to give Cathe a try. I had seen her DVDs on Collage Video and had been intimidated by the covers, always showing her working hard. It hadn’t occurred to me before that a lot of the other workout DVDs have their instructors pose nicely for the cover, Cathe’s covers certainly didn’t give me any illusions as to what it was going to be like!
My first titles were High Step Training and Cardio and Weights. I loved them and was so happy to have found advanced workouts that demanded something of my brain as well as of my body. The step choreography was more complex than anything I had ever done and I realized here was finally my chance to get a little dancy, since I had never been able to attend a dance class growing up.
When 4 Day Split came out, Cathe got me starting to work out to her DVDs 4 days a week and then with STS I graduated to 6 times a week.
My kids have been around exercise ever since they were born; they started lifting my lightest dumbbells to imitate me and used my step to do marches and step-ups on while I was doing floor work or weights. Both of them enjoy stretching with me. When I’m not working out, they use my workout equipment to make obstacle courses and I smile every time when I see them incorporating moves I know they have seen me do with Cathe! My son has been impatiently waiting for the Travel Fit DVD and popped it in the DVD player as soon as it came in the mail, and he just had a blast doing the heavy bag workout with Cathe and her pink boxing gloves!
There were several thoughts that kept going through my mind as I was working out having so much fun. ‘If only my P.E. teacher could see me now’, was one of them. And another one, one I am super thrilled with is: my kids are not going to have to learn how to love exercise, they have grown up with it and seen it valued in their home. I would have never believed I would ever hear myself say that I love to exercise! Cathe has even helped me to enjoy competition: competing with myself to keep improving my own fitness level! Thank you Cathe for not only getting me to commit to exercise for life but also for building up a new aspect of the legacy I pass on to my kids!