I started going to the gym, and learning how to weight train, when I was a teenager. I was a very antagonistic teenager, and if I was going to go to the gym then, by gum, I wanted to do what none of my peers were doing, which is why I was drawn to the free weights room. I wanted none of your girly classes and complaints about bulking up; I wanted to lift heavy shit, and I wanted to be belligerent about it. Moreover, to begin with I didn't even bother to train my legs. Girls were concerned with their legs, I thought. I wanted to pump my guns like a dude.

I mention this to give an idea of what my exercise philosophy has long been. I became a bit less set in my ways after drinking the strength and flexibility koolaid at ANU, but still. Still I sneered at the ladies trotting off to their Les Mills yoga classes, mats tucked under their arms. Still I snorted at claims you could 'lengthen' muscles,* apparently in opposition to nasty, 'bulking' weight training. Still I scowled at stretching of any kind, which is possibly why I'm about as elastic as [please to insert clever, chortle-inducing simile about flexibility here, as apparently I'm just not up to it this morning. For reals, her is a list of similes I have considered using: 'about as elastic as Jim Waley on a cold morning/Paula Abdul's boobs/Tyra Banks' weave.' Aren't you now glad I used a little restraint and left it up to you, the reader?]

Aside from my rather ornery disposition towards exercise, which has left me strong but inflexible, I'm also rather the anxious person. In the past month or so it's become clear to me that living in a perpetual state of tensed, cringing anxiety is no longer cute, and something must be done. As I am not the type to sit still for any length of time meditation was out, I decided to give yoga a red hot go. And, you know what? It's not so bad.

I found an agreeable studio in the city that is so very feminine one ovulates immediately upon entry, rather confusing the male clients. There are stacks of new, imported ladymags in the waiting area and Aesop products in the bathroom. The instructor is robust, blonde and freckled, and sounds like a BBC foreign correspondant. Best of all, I've learned that yoga is actually rather obscene. You're often told to grasp great handfuls of buttock flesh and pull them out of the way, and I defy anyone not to giggle at the term 'downward dog.' Goodness knows I appreciate any group activity where, at the beginning, you're repeatedly asked to tell the group if you're menstruating or not.

So, in conclusion, I am a pill. Ladyish fitness activities are most satisfying in their own way, especially when a handsome British woman instructs you to manipulate your own buttocks.

* however, I reiterate, you cannot make muscles longer. It just doesn't happen. Stop saying you make muscles longer, pilates. It truly does hurt me on the inside.