Stuff I Learned About Life From Intense Interval Training

Who am I kidding?
Me the queen of marathon-chatting sessions with girlfriends while holding a hot-caffeinated beverage in hand? The gold-medallist of all things sofa - books and movies and writing and cuddles? Me?! Interval training? When in the past, success was if I crawled uninjured after a Zumba class, for seniors?

Actually - yeah!

This happened to be a winter of deep hibernation for me - and those are dangerous!
For someone who already had one serious encounter with a beast called depression, being as much as even lightly brushed by its wicked whip poses a major threat. When depression approaches obstacles start to appear larger than they actually are. Minor everyday problems acquire a long and dark shadow. The appetite dissapears (which - I agree - for the first little while sounds like a welcome gift).
Wickedly, the bed then starts exerting its gravitational pull, the muscles go sluggish and the duvet is right there to conveniently muffle even the softest of cries. Shame moves in. It's so dangerous because it's so easy. It feels like comfort. Sleep is good. I am just tired. Let me put my head down...

I credit an incredible army of people for making sure I didn't get caught into the treacherous spiralling-down depression web that was so eager, so motivated, so applied to suck me in. Left on my own, I would have surely succumbed to it without a fight. Like a fierce giant insect, depression sucks life juice out of you, than effortlessly crushes the shell. Eats your heart. Then rips your head off.

But what if you - somehow - get dragged to take care of that shell first? Well, thankfully, I was.
He did it very much in a cave-man fashion, as - almost literally - he had to drag me there by my pony tail (thank you husband!).

There is this truly punishing gym in our neighbourhood my sole-mate raves about. They have classes called TreadSanity and ROWster and H.I.I.T. and Gravity, and countless others I am yet to try. Fellow-gym goers for the most part look as if they are all training for the friggin' Iron Man. It is intimidating as hell to step inside, but once you do - regardless of the level of ultimate unpreparedness - pure magic happens.

Here is what I learned about life from sprints and burpees and kettlebells and slamballs and shoulder-presses and push-ups and bands and sumo-squats and bosu balls. And buckets of epsom salt afterwards.


1. You do one hard thing as a break from another hard thing

This is also exactly how my grandfather taught me how to study when I was little. Doing what's hardest first (math) then taking a break with another demanding subject (French) than relaxing with the easiest thing (art project) so I can return to the second hardest (history). Without procrastination all was done right after school and the rest of the day was free for play and friends and writing.

The same rule goes for the gym: running on treadmill under an ever increasing incline is abruptly halted so I can enjoy 20 Mountain Climbers or burpees (oh how much I still hate those), or push ups. Who knew I would learn to rest doing a 60 second plank!?


2. Your weight is all yours - unless you drop it, you've got to carry it

Gravity Gear

This is just like life coaching - you can select to drop the baggage and travel light through life or it is all yours to carry forward. My personal twist is that I learned to quickly start loving my baggage at least for the duration that I have to lift and carry it as a burden. Instant gratification rarely exists when what you want is real, long-lasting and meaningful. I tend to joke about my load - it makes it lighter and I sometimes don't even notice when it disappears! Poof!

It is nowhere more obvious that all my weight was mine than in this workout called Gravity - 60 minutes of having my core, arms and legs pull all of the glorious me I managed to acquire under my own skin, especially since my little kids were born! There are no fairies, helpers or marines descending into the gym to help. One must carry one's own weight until the clock says so, no matter what.

3. You can do anything for 60 seconds

I learned this one night between January 23/24 1996. during the marathon no-epidural-available birth of my first son. As fellow women who attempted natural birth know - a contraction, that minute long WTF?! How did we even survive as species?! intense sensation, a contraction is a perfect example of us being wired to survive anything if it is a minute long. I still have the watch I had on my wrist in labour mesmerizingly envisioning the relief I would feel when the second handle passes the moon.

Some wicked gym guru clearly knew this because when we to this H.I.I.T class staying on each station for a minute with 40 sec of insane intensity and 20 seconds recovery time the body is tricked into a relief that really never arrives while the reward is amazing!

4. Angry music makes for great motivation

I admit. Growing up, I was a total new-wave snob with tunes (and mixed tapes and posters) of Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Visage, Ultravox and OMD. I scoffed at people who wore AC/DC and KISS T-shirts while injuring perfectly fine denim jackets by embedding pointy metal beads into them. Listening to heavy metal. Shaking a big head of unwashed hair, tongue sticking out!

But boy can that 'angry' music make for an amazing trip while running or rowing indoors! I close my eyes and transport myself somewhere Mad Max-like and listen to the machine zip under my vigorous steps and pulls. It's rocket fuel. Who knew?!

5. Pick a great crew: Rocky Balboa, Hurricane Carter & moi

If in need of the initial drive to get one started it was so worth re-watching movies that celebrated a man's turn to physical empowerment as a stepping stone to mental strength. The hidden gift of hibernation is that days are really long and Netflix is really generous.

Those moments when the burn would be excruciating (ahem, only for me - the rest of the gym-goers seem to be immensely enjoying themselves) I got silver screen peeps to join me, make it meaningful and even more fierce. Imagination is an amazing gym prop!

6. Never say never

I ❤️my gym!

I know. The king of all clichés. But if I ever feel that it is true, it is right now.
There is no less likely person to enjoy being on a treadmill than me. How many times have friends tried to lure me into the Running Room group or a 5k run? My excuse was always the same: "Oh, I am not a runner!" Then I pull out the data about knees and ankles and running in filthy city air. Sure, I would do a Hawaii marathon, however... I love running on treadmill. Crave it. Just like I do yoga. Super weird.

The point is not to get as fit as to qualify for the Olympics. Or to match/surpass the number the 'treader' next to me seems to be effortlessly blasting through. The point is to look at each day like a marathon I was chosen to run. Then show up. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Sweat. Hustle. Burn. If I could do it - anyone can do it. And when a whiff of Lysol wipes fills the air, it means 60min expired and it's time to get the equipment ready for the next group of warriors. And that alone feels like gold!

There's No Place[nta] Like Home!

One of the toughest things I ever had to do as an immigrant-single-mother was become a landlord.

 That skill was required if we were to succeed with an arrangement that my son and I can start living independently in our own house five minutes away from the school as well as steps away from my mom - aka Bajce aka day-care aka before&after school program aka ruthless retired-lawyer tutor aka #all-meals-made-from-scratch. Often in my early days of motherhood that coincided with the early days of heartache over my unexpected divorce I would come to the conclusion that no one really needed a husband, if they only had a mom like mine! 

        The tough part about renting the basement of my mother's house was that for 500$/month it was hard to attract a “high quality tenant”. So, burdened by my own story and wanting to save the world one single mother at the time, the first two tenants have both been single moms, each with a little boy in tow. The first one lasted only for a few months. Her beautiful blue sparkly eyes hid a severe mental illness I couldn't have picked up on the interview. Nor would I have deemed it fair to deny her shelter because of it. After all, I am a healthcare professional - stigma stops with me. Unfortunately, the social services picked it up no problem as they came to collect the 4-year-old that she left home alone while she went running on the streets, shouting and hitting cars with a wooden plank she picked up along the way. Naked. 

The second single mom was a child with a child. I should have known there was no way she could afford to be a responsible parent let alone a tenant - there was a venti Starbucks frappuccino in her hand every day coming home while her boy munched on a mummified McNugget, greasy little fingers clutching the happy meal toy. My hope was that by mere proximity to my mother, who was always a mom to any kid we happened to bring home, she would start knowing better, doing better. Once when she hadn't left her apartment for a few days, mom went down with a hot soup and a freshly-baked banana bread, sure they were both down with flu, only to discover they must have moved out overnight, forgetting to lock the door and pay the last three months rent. She had said she was between jobs. I nodded and said I understood. 

        Thankfully an unemployed history teacher turned Riverdale jail guard working the night-shift soon moved in, causing us to relax for a long stretch of time. We appreciated having this interesting and well-read man sleep all day. He appreciated finding a banana bread on his window sill when he came home at dawn. 

       But just before him, we had another tenant - an old lady, Jun… Oh, do I remember! 

        Back in the nineties, it cost me a fortune (36$!) to place an ad in the newspaper hoping to find a renter. Today there is just about a million free ways to search for the right tenant - pages and pages of rental websites can be found in seconds. Between Airbnb, Craigslist, Kijiji, Tripadvisor and a myriad of local rental hubs, it is easy for one to post an ad - the photos, the hood, the price. Right? 

        Who would you want to live in your space, should your work, say, take you abroad for six months of the year? A period too long to just put sheets over the furniture and too short to contemplate selling. 

        A friend of mine - a smart, honest and meticulous human being - took an analytical approach to advertising her beautiful place downtown. She was looking for a professional (read: pay rent on time) couple (single people can attract all sorts of trouble back home with them), non smokers, no pets (for obvious reasons), no kids (perhaps because she's met my kids?) to leave her sacred space to strangers for six months (in exchange for rent money, of course). As it turned out, she had an amazing choice of couples from which to choose. Guess we always look for something similar to us and something we hold in high regard when making these decisions. That way, although there are no guarantees, at least for the start we feel like we made a safe and reliable choice. So, no wonder, my friend settled, after a series of Skype calls, on a couple that was already on route to the big city: a PhD candidate and his yoga instructor wife. It spelled: responsible. Honest. It radiated: karma-conscious. In subconscious mind: safe. Decent.

       The neighbours said they were quite nice. For the most part - quiet. They kept to themselves. 

       The familiar noise of keys jingling in my friend's hand as she approached her front door six moths later invoked a feeling of anxiety - what would she find walking back into the sacred space she worked so hard for? The recent news-story of an Airbnb condo being trashed beyond recognition as if a rock-band had been holding an after-party and a barfing marathon in it probably sits in minds of anyone who has ever handed the keys of their home to a stranger. 

        So when the door opened and she caught a glimpse of the inside of her home looking familiar and welcoming she relaxed. As agreed, the couple had hired her own cleaning lady to come several times during their stay and clearly they had kept their part of that bargain.

       Kicking off her shoes, she went to her bathroom to refresh. Brand new soap bar. Clean towels. Thank goodness. 

        Nothing feels more like “Home Sweet Home” then stretching out comfortably on your own familiar bed. Your bedding. Your pillow. The scent of your favourite fabric softener. The ultimate comfort we work hard for. 

       She didn’t know whether it was an unfamiliar smell or was it the room’s Feng Shui that seemed odd and all upside-down but for some reason she just couldn't relax. She tossed and turned and became restless as if waiting for some truth to sink in. 

       And what do we do when we feel the pang of unexplained anxiety? We make a trip to the fridge! She was still contemplating which healthy snack would provide both ease and comfort, her hand on the fridge handle when a note under a magnet caught her eye. 

       It was a neighbours’ "welcome to the hood" note. Introducing herself. Listing the best coffee and take out places. Then saying she was excited to meet the little fella soon.

  

       Little fellow? What little fellow? 

Although my friend is a devoted doggy-mom the ad had specified no pets. A vet had recommended that so that her dog would feel like she was home once they returned. 

      Could it be a child? All these calls - they said nothing about bringing a child! 

      As it turned out, the yoga instructor - I’ll call her Rosemary - and her academic hubby were liars. Rosemary was nearly 7 months pregnant when they moved in - easy to disguise on Skype if one wants to. Not so easy to disguise as one waddles down the street and runs into a neighbour. 

      People don’t need to ask landlords for permission to have kids. I get that. How about getting consent to having a home birth? 

     

According to the made-to-sound-cool blog post, one day during the February freeze, my friend’s place became the birthplace of a baby boy. And a make-shift hospital where two midwives practiced their skill, hoping nothing would go wrong. Home births sound great in theory - if nothing goes wrong. Sometimes, however, things do go wrong - a breached baby or a slowed heart beat or a lack of oxygen or inhaled meconium or mom’s blood pressure rising or a placenta previa or a million other things. A famous Serbian ob-gyn got himself in hot water once stating that the woman is closest to death during childbirth, statistics proving him right. In that case your home could become an address on the death certificate?

       My friend’s place was also a training ground - apparently two mid-wives in training attended as well, together with a crowd of family and friends likely holding hands and chanting “Kumbaya” in lieu of an epidural. Or to clear the karma of two parents who conscientiously chose to birth their child in a cloud of deceit - equivalent to having him wrapped into a yoga mat made of lies. How very granola of them!

       I’m an unreasonably-affectionate mother of three. For 823 days of my life I have been an expectant mother, loving my nausea and my swollen feet, nightly leg cramps and even the dreaded finger exams - all this was leading to my motherhood graduation days one January, one July and one October. And with recent public lash-outs on breast-feeding moms or the omnipresent fat-shaming should one not shed all the baby weight in the first few weeks like our Angies, and Jessicas and Giselles effortlessly do - I am extremely protective of new moms. They don’t tell us how hard the first few months of ultimate sleep deprivation are. Or that breast-feeding at the beginning hurts more than the roughest of labour pains. Or that the baby blues is often a cruel downplay on postpartum depression we feel too guilty to admit and get treated. White knuckling those first days and months trying to look as blissful as expected. Reading those damn cards that completely misrepresent the chaos we are trying to get the hold of (Hallmark and I have never been on good terms). No one tells us that it sometimes takes years to get our bodies back in shape or our marriage back to harmony; our jobs back to rewarding. And our self-esteem back at all!

       And with all my love and understanding of new moms I can’t fathom any place but the hospital for me to leave my sweat and tears and many other bodily fluids coming out of me and my baby. Leaving it in someone else’s home is just plain gross and irresponsible. And a biohazard.

     

Internet - the oasis of quotes! 

 I visited my friend the other day giving her a hug after her exciting time abroad. And as we chatted and laughed I casually disappeared to the kitchen and silently opened her freezer. I scanned the few boxes - some packages of edamame and a frozen yoghurt desert. Phew, no umbilical cord stored -- they dodged the hospital, but what about the cord blood banking? It’s now up to Bella*, her poodle to check the backyard for anything else.

       You see, that old lady Jun - my last horrible tenant - was a hoarder. As seen on TV. The worst find during the clean-up after a long-fought eviction: fish insides, guts and intestines, bagless in the fridge and freezer. Although we had to replace the fridge I was so relieved the bloody fragments actually belonged to a fish. It could've been worse. That fall as we prepared to plant bulbs in the flower beds, we discovered that Jun buried about 3 dozen fish heads. The rotting smell scarred me for life. Gave up gardening - forever. 

But still better than finding Rosemary’s placenta stashed somewhere! 

       *not her real name 

What if HO HO HO stands for "HOrrendous HOliday HOarding"?

If you close your eyes, take a really deep breath, hold it for a few seconds, then have a long loud exhale through your mouth while still truly believing (cue in the music, please) "It's the most wonderful time of the year" -- please click on another page. Now. This week's post is not for you. Close this down. Thank you. Ciao! Just kidding... read on!

Disclaimer: No, I am not an #IH8XMAS weirdo. Nor have I been scarred for life in my early childhood -- making a wish list of sorts and then being ignored by Santa or his reps, getting both zilch & bubkes as a result, forever remembering that morning that forever ruined Christmas for me. All joking aside, too often in my coaching, I see this story repeat itself, bearing considerable grief straight into mid life. The same applies for "my parents used my Bar Mitzvah money to pay for my Bar Mitzvah". Disappointment is a universal beast.

How abundance felt

Diving straight to the place of major nostalgia for me, let me confess that I loved New Year's time when I was little. Born into Serbian Orthodox heritage during the communist reign meant fasting all day on Jan 6th, including the X-mas Eve and a food-over-loaded, yet gift-less X-mas day on January 7th. All the while making sure the shutters were closed and the curtains were down. None of this celebrating was allowed by Marshal Tito and his party. My mother still remembers some songs her grandparents sang for these occasions, and she will sing them beautifully, come January, adding hum's and la-la-la's in lieu of lyrics that have been long forgotten. We were a small yet loud and affectionate family of ten: Grandfather, grandmother, their two daughters with husbands and their four kids. I was the baby.

However, we did get the presents each Dec 31st - they were called "New Year's packages" - pre-paid at our mom's workplace. The employer's union meeting hall, with buzzing and randomly blinking neon lights, would fill up with good parents and excited kids. Despite our fanciest attire, we all looked greenish-blue. The fat dude in a red suit called Santa all around the world, had a different name here: Deda (Grandpa) Mraz (Frost). He was lean and tall like Serbians usually are, and he sported a white beard fashioned from cotton balls. He must have looked really creepy as I am hysterically crying in almost every single photograph my parents took, developed, printed and neatly placed in a family album. Although I have vivid memories of my early childhood, I don't remember a single gift I ever received.

What I do remember, however, is the smell of the live fir tree my father would bring on December 31st. My mom would get the ladder and from the farthest depths of the tallest shelf would materialize a few magical boxes filled with unique hand-crafted glass ornaments. Half of her career my mom was a lawyer at The Institute for Manufacturing Banknotes and Coins - the mint. Her work friends were designers and artists who 'played' with making one-of-a kind art. She started a collection, delighting my sister and me. She still has them. But what I loved even more than these unique shapes were the lights. My mom would string them first, place the shiny garlands deep inside the tree, then let us, kids, carefully slide each precious ornament into the place we chose. Every night she would flick the switch and the tiny colourful bulbs would warm up, inspiring the evergreen to cast its spell. The lights would stay on all night making our old and uneven walls glow with a magical hue. And although I was somewhat aware of how unglamorous it all looked in the daylight, that time of the year the nighttimes were sheer abundance. I felt wealthy.

Perhaps this is why my first experience of a North American Christmas had such a weird effect on me. My first step on the US soil was none less than New York, New York. The movie, architecture & art lover that I am, I didn't have time to notice the Rudolphs, wreaths and jingles. I was mesmerized by this city from my first breath. This hasn't changed. The second stop was Houston, TX, where we, my first ex husband (I'll call him F/X) and I, were to witness the traditional Christmas affair: the live Nutcracker performance followed by the maple-glazed ham and a ginormous stuffed turkey, and tearing through Neiman Marcus gift-wrapping paper. Da "works".

On the first day I met F/X's family, I also met a darling 3-year-old boy who was our host's grandson. With a Croatian father and a Chinese mother, this child looked both cute and interesting to me; I was unaccustomed to multiracial families. The only other race in Serbia were Gypsies. Immediately I owned the role of his aunty-in-love. We played everything: from peek-a-boo and tickle-toes to hide-and-seek and irresponsibly run-run-running around the house, filled with oversized golden statues and tacky porcelain figurines. When the moment arrived for all of the family to gather around the giant tree, I seriously expected a school bus loaded with orphaned children would be honking at the driveway any second, announcing their arrival. There were  s o   m a n y   t o y s  on the display for only One (1) three-year-old child. They could have done their own WestJet miracle. Seriously.

That year, little Johnny* got a train set. A kick-ass train set, battery operated with meters of rails, traffic signs and a working ramp! He got a remote control operated helicopter. And a car he could sit in, with gears and shock absorbers. And a formula-one race track. I almost forgot a puny little Fisher-Price school bus, to round the transportation department offering under the tree. Add a mega Lego set - one of those we'd just seen in the NYC's flagship store -- we had checked out the price, laughed and said out loud: "Who buys this??!" He also got a bench with the mini Black & Decker power tools, each tool actually making a faint electronic noise so the kid is not confused which one he is playing with. Further in the sound category, there was a keyboard with a record/replay option and a microphone. A mini drum set. A kid walkman. Kid camera. Kid phone. The only thing missing was a kid's HELP phone.

Uninterested in this near vulgar display of reverence many friends and business partners felt for the powerful CEO Grandpa, although many gifts were no doubt purchased by the family as well, little Johnny impatiently yanked at my knuckles right after the adults had finished ripping the holly-infused wrapping paper, ooo-ing, aaah-ing and moo-ing to excite a reaction from the child.

"Mau-ina**!!! Let's go run, run, run!!! C'mon Mau-ina!!!" was the only reaction.

Soon after, when we were once again deeply engrossed in the play that cost no more than my cheerful presence, his mother appeared. She pulled me aside and forbade me to continue to 'engage with her son in this manner, as it will build an expectation that she is not willing to fulfill'. English was still a foreign language to me (I would immigrate to Canada only four years later) so I tried to repeat that statement in slow-motion in my head doubting I fully understood - she does not run, run, run and do tickle-toes with little Johnny??! No way! Then she ordered: "And no more wearing perfume when I am here!" Totally getting how privileged I am, I was the first to find out little Johnny was gonna be a big brother. Double the order for the kids' help phone, please!