When it comes to getting and staying fit, it’s important to know your strengths and weaknesses. Strengths for obvious reasons and weaknesses, presumably, so you’ll know where to focus on improvements. But I’ve learned recently there are some weaknesses that cannot be turned into strengths and should just be left well enough alone. For me, that weakness is Step Class. Yes, it’s still a thing and it’s still fairly popular in gyms across America.

The last time I attempted a step class was sometime in the mid-2000s and I’m pretty sure someone made a joke about 1994 calling and wanting its step class back. But despite people thinking it’s a thing of the past, it is very much alive and well. And it chose 2016 to come back to haunt me. You see, that first foray into Step was with my best friend and her mother and I thought we’d all be equally ok at this but I couldn’t have been more wrong. A friend who I’d never seen work out or dance and a woman with 30-ish years on me completely left me in the dust. Dust I’d managed to kick up by flailing about with no sense of direction for the whole miserable hour. While they were having a blast, I never got the hang of it and vowed to never, EVER, take another step class.

Cut to present day. A Tuesday to be exact. I had big plans to bust out some cardio and follow it up with arms and ab work. My gym BFF and I had just started up our treadmills when Trainer came by and begged us to go take a step class with him (he wasn’t teaching it, just wanted to try it out). Oh. Holy. NO. Memories of tripping over that black, green and purple step nearly made me trip on the tread. I had to hold onto the rails to steady myself. And you would think that, coupled with my sharp intake of breath and look of absolute horror, would have clearly conveyed my disinterest but no, he pressed on.

Trainer: Come on, it’ll be fun!

Me: But I am TERRIBLE at step class.

Trainer: So am I! We can hide in the back. Come ON. Let’s try something different!

I shot a look at Gym BFF who simply shrugged and said ok. Shit. Now what? How could I get out of this? I tried saying again how really, really awful I am and that I should probably just stick to what I know. But by then he’d talked a couple other folks into it and I caved under the peer pressure and followed along, hoping – praying – there would be safety in numbers.

There wasn’t. With mirrors on two walls and floor-to-ceiling windows on the other two walls (one looking outside, the other into a busy lobby) it didn’t matter that I was in the back. There was nowhere to hide. And if you were to guess that a Step Class instructor would be very excited about a handful of new students in class, you would be right. He was thrilled and very welcoming which put me at ease thinking he might actually take it easy on us. His sweet smile lulled me into a false sense of security as he started us off with a few simple moves and pleasant small talk.

Yeah, that only lasted about five minutes. Then I was lost for the next hour and ten minutes. He picked up the pace and started yelling words and combos I’d never heard before. Then I tried to concentrate on watching his feet to mimic his footsteps but he started moving around the room. With no step under his steps I spiraled quickly into a code red disaster. To make matters worse, he came over to try and help me which had the opposite effect. Standing directly in front of me yelling words that I didn’t understand while pointing at my feet wasn’t helping me correct my  mistakes, it was only drawing even more attention from the rest of the class that everything I was doing was wrong.

I tried to laugh off my missteps (I’ve had plenty of experience, being a total goon and all) and tell him I just wasn’t cut out for this sort of class but that I would keep trying and not to worry about me. Which seemed to work because he smiled, said “YESSSSS” and danced across the studio to focus on some other folks. Unfortunately, my break was short lived as I kept screwing up and he kept coming over to me. And the more he yelled words like “flamingo! horseshoe! revolving door!” in my face as I  stumbled over my own feet, the more panicked and trapped I felt. I was so painfully aware of my lack of coordination, grace and rhythm, but knew I couldn’t leave the class without making a scene and making a bigger fool of myself than I already had with the ridiculous flailing.

I was on the verge of tears but somehow managed to get through the rest of that horrible class by repeating the handful of moves I knew, staring at the clock and shutting down the instructor’s attempts to help by smiling and saying, “All I can do, man.” It was the longest and most humiliating hour and fifteen minutes of my life. I’ve flubbed a presentation in front of a room full of 150 people before and that paled in comparison to the anguish I felt just trying to survive that class.

Step Class just isn’t my thing. I truly admire and appreciate the hop-turn-grapevining gurus of the world but I have accepted that there are just some things I will never be good at. So if 1994 calls again asking for its step class back, I won’t hesitate to say, “It’s all yours, sweetheart.”