Heartaches and some fun adventures behind me, and what’s important all around me, I was finally inspired to do Date #17.

My oldest son has taken Gymnastics lessons for the last few years. His Gymnastics Academy has recently started offering adult classes. I thought this would be a great thing for me to try! I’m no gymnast, but I could hold my own out on the playground back in the day!!! Never mind the fact that those days were decades ago, this girl can still whip out some playground tumbling moves! I thought I would give the class a try in the hopes that, maybe if I liked it, I would add it to my workout options. I love Crossfit, and gymnastics class could really help me improve some things that I struggle with in my Crossfit endeavors.

Anyway…I showed up to my first class, not really knowing what to expect. They said it was a class suited for all levels of gymnastics abilities. I am familiar with the instructor because I’ve seen him with his classes when I’m there to watch my son. I know he’s very sweet and patient with 8 year old girls, check! But, I didn’t know what type of adult gymnastics people would show up to this class. The first class was pretty small. Two of us were comfortable with basic playground tumbling moves and the others had some college level gymnastics background.

We started class with a warm up that included some running around the gym and stretching. I am the world’s most inflexible woman, so being surrounded by people dropping into splits during stretch time was a little funny. The instructor had us do a series of basic tumbling moves to gauge where we all were and then we got started with class. They set up several different tumbling stations and a couple of strength focused stations, allowing people to work on what most appealed to them.

I chose to try the back handspring training stations. I’ve NEVER done any back jumping type tumbling because I was never brave enough to teach myself that stuff. After some seated back diving floor drills and then some exercises diving backwards into a big crash pad, we graduated to getting spotted back diving over the handspring boulder pad. The backwards tumbling stuff feels really strange. The gymnasts in the room would say it was the easiest because they could see where they were going. I understand that’s true when you know what you’re doing, but as a newbie, it feels like a weird backwards blind leap of faith. I started to feel much more comfortable with it after a few tumbles over “The Boulder”.

I also did work on handstands. I can do a handstand, but can’t hold it for very long. I’d like to be able to do walking handstands and get better at handstand push-ups for Crossfit.

Adult Gymnastics was really a lot of fun. I definitely felt like a fish out of water, but I also really enjoyed going in and having the chance to tumble as a grown up. The instructor said he would be happy to also work on strength related stuff that I want to develop for Crossfit, like Muscle-ups. I ended up adding this class as a part of my workout routine every other Wednesday. Unfortunately, I did have an accident. I had a bad landing doing a round-off and broke my foot. 😞

I’m looking forward to getting back in there when my foot is healed. For now, I have to be a little creative to keep in shape.

Being a little out of commission has given me some inspiration for Date #18. Thank you for reading!