Happy with climbing stairs and at peace with not jumping up on boxes – FIT IS A FEMINIST ISSUE

The fancy gym I joined has some serious stairs. They’re the main way you access the weight room, the yoga studio, the cycling studio, and all the cardio equipment.

Oh, and also, up to the personal training studio.

I have “noped” out on those stairs and taken the elevator since joining. It’s slow and small but when I started I was waiting for knee replacement surgery. And then I was recovering from surgery.

But now?

After coming back from New Zealand where I did lots of climbing, I’ve started using the stairs at the gym. Go me! It feels good.

I’ve also started taking random other fitness classes at the gym. Things fill up quickly and so Sarah and I signed up for a kettlebell interval class because there were spots. Sunday morning at 9 am we got the studio to discover the interval bits were step class movements. The instructor was speed jumping on steps. Not at all knee friendly. I’ve had knee surgery and Sarah has no ACL. The instructor gave stepping up, instead of jumping, as an option and that was a good thing. Even if she hadn’t said a word that’s what we would have been doing. And we were not alone.

I wasn’t sure how this would feel. And you know what? It felt fine. I had zero competitive urge to jump. Zero.

So this week I was happy to see that I could feel good about climbing the stairs and not feel bad about about not jumping in step class.

Both taking the stairs and not feeling bad in the step class feel like wins. They’re victories of a different sort to be sure. But they are both victories in my books.