This Week At The Gym: Week 9

Well, last week at the gym. For the first time I did not leave Cathy Brown's Thursday boxing class feeling like a complete klutz. I had an aching waist the next day, but that was because I was moving my torso with the punches, just as Cathy tells us to. It's something you have to do to understand just how much more power it gives you. It seems impossible that a swing of the torso and a little pivot on the foot could add so much clout, but it does. It feels way more aggressive as well: an uppercut that comes from the whole body feels like the nasty and dangerous punch it is. There's still no way I can do forty squat thrusts, and the hold-the-position press-ups (hold-ups?) had me collapsing at number six, but I'm okay with that. That's what I'm there for.

The real breakthrough came on Monday, when I did something that in October 2010 I would have told you I could never do. At lunchtime I ran two miles at 9.3 kph. I felt like I had distance to spare, it wasn't the painful effort that one-and-a-half miles had been the previous week. On the Wednesday lunchtime I ran 3.5 kilometres, which is just over two miles.

And three towels under my head, together with a class tutor who doesn't try to make us do advanced exercises, means that the Pilates class is now working. I have lordosis, so when it comes time to do the rolling bit, everyone else gets going, while I lift my chin and pelvis and any attempt at rolling stops at a flat spot in my spine ten inches long. I can do one of those rolling sit ups, but only if I have a towel in the hollow of my lower back.

Lordosis will also guarantee that you'll never have that flat, sleek footballer torso and that your tummy will never be truly flat. I'll be happy as long as it's not making my coats bulge out in front of me.