Today I did Pilates for the first time in quite awhile. (And by "awhile", I mean something along the line of years.) I found some of the Winsor Pilates episodes on YouTube that I used to work out to from maybe 2005 to 2018 (sporadically, that is).

Here is what I remembered, after tackling that 20-minute workout. 

• I am not flexible. I have never been flexible and will likely become flexible only if someone chops off my leg and places it against my forehead. And then I guess I'm really just dismembered.
  
  
• 
  The lead Pilates demonstrator always looks so happy, even when she's contorted into the most bizarre or strenuous positions. This position? I swore the entire time I was in it, but she looks like she's just sitting normally, maybe reaching for a bowl of ice cream. At moments, I hate her. At other moments, I love her and want her to reach over and high five me. Just once I want them to move the guy to be the front-and-center person. He seems more my pace: he's doing it because he's getting paid, doing a great job, but isn't an overachiever and is just biding his time until he can leave class to go grab a Miller High Life. 
  
  

• I have a hard time counting. I mean, basic addition and counting I'm okay with, but pilates counting is something different. The number of repetitions plus the number within is what they're doing, or something like that...? I always end up doing more than I should. That does not please me, and my abs hate me for it.
  
  
• I always think that the next session will be better, my body will adapt, it will get easier. No. I am like watching a salmon moving upstream. It looks as difficult as it is, and as much as you might want to yell "Go, little buddy, go!" for encouragement, you hold back because you're afraid that you might spook them and, realistically speaking, they won't hear you. I won't hear you due to the whoosh of inflexibility resonating in my head and my mumbling the wrong rep counts.