A New Voice, A New Perspective on Ageless With Kathy Smith

My friend Kritter and I have a gold-star system working. I got the idea from my friends Nancy and Sarah. The deal is this: every day that we exercise at least 30 minutes, we get a gold star on our shared online calendar. (We live in different cities.)

That’s all. Just a gold star. No prize at the end, no goal other than seeing the calendar fill up with gold stars. This, oddly enough, is motivation enough.

Consequently, Krit and I talk about exercising a lot. I’ve been working out for decades, she’s just a couple of on-and-off years into having a fitness program. But she has embraced the life. She’s also the Queen of Google and so she’s always feeding me interesting health and fitness related tidbits. She’s one of my fitness buddies, and she knows her way around fitness DVDs.

I give Kritter DVDs I think she’d like, after I review them or if I think I won’t. I wasn’t impressed with the Ageless With Kathy Smith DVD, but Kritter said it sounded like she might like it. And, it turns out, she did. She begged to differ with my review and her emailed explanation makes so much sense, I asked to post it here. And, better yet, she has also agreed to write reviews for Suit Up and Show Up, freshening things up around here with a new perspective. Yay!

Counterpoint: Ageless With Kathy Smith

I got out the Kathy Smith Ageless DVD.  You would have thought I hadn't exercised in years.  I had no balance.  I had no ab/core tone.  I had no nothing.  I kept having to backtrack.   Things I could at least sorta do a couple weeks ago were out of my grasp.  And yet, I persevered.  And for that reason alone I get a gold star.

I'm still mulling why I like the DVD (particularly after today's poor performance).  I really think I'm the target audience.  Older, basically out of shape—but no, you couldn't do much with it having not exercised in 20 years and being 40 pounds overweight.  You're the right age, but you've consistently kept up the exercising, frequently with DVDs, so for you she's just preaching to the choir, same old same old.  But there are lots of women like me out there.

You know she has to keep that body at her age.  When she tells you to lift the weights and do the stretching, you realize she's telling herself the same thing EVERY FUCKING DAY.  Yeah, she likes the sweating and the physicality of working out more than I do and yeah, I know she's fit way beyond anything I'll ever achieve, but I don't think she's pushing unreasonably, nor is she threatening (a la Jillian).  She doesn't go too fast, so even if you're struggling with a move, you stand a chance to get enough repetitions in without starting the segment over.

Basically, I can do some of it fairly well and the rest gives me something to work towards.