The Mystery Behind the 'Old Lady Workout' (no offense, please!)

As a relatively young person, I've been curious for a long long time...

....what is behind those curtain covered windows.

It's probably the kid in me that wants to know what's going on inside the place that I can't see into.....

It's like this big secret that they keep from the whole world! What REALLY is going on behind fogged over windows?!? A super cool club? A religious-ish organization? I've always been intrigued.....at least curious.

A few weeks ago, I got a call from our local Curves store, "Someone recommended you for a free week!"

Should I be offended?!? I kid, I kid...I'm not offended. 

FINALLY a chance to see what is all the buzz about Curves. 

{disclaimer: what I found may be different than YOUR local Curves store}

So here is what I found: 

Pretty much exactly like this picture, minus 16 people. 

Here's how it works:  

You start on one of the pads walking, jogging in place, doing a two step....whatever you want...

Then after a 30 second circuit, the music in the room will prompt you "Move to the Next station"

Genius. 

As you can see, many of the machines are very standard....but they are no weights, all hydraulics. Some of these machines are probably completely unique to the Curves system--I had never seen even the concept of a couple of them...

So you do the entire circuit twice, with 6 pauses to check your heart rate.

So, I went twice from my whole free week, and saw some pros and some cons to the system:

1. Because I was a newbie, I had an instructor showing me how to use the machines--a couple of times as she was explaining a machine she would say 'Do it this way, because you don't want to be sore tomorrow." I don't want to be sore tomorrow?! I don't want to be disabled tomorrow, but a little burn never hurt a girl. Con.

2. The time factor. It is concise and purposeful, you know it will take you 30 minutes to complete the workout. Sometimes at the gym I get distracted and waste a lot of time. Pro.

3. Results. OBVIOUSLY I went twice, It's not like I lost 15lbs, but along the wall, they have lists of names of people who have completed 100, 200, 300 up to 1000 workouts. Remember this is a small town, so MANY of the names I recognized. Middle age to older ladies...none of them were portraits of fitness in my mind, even 1000 workouts. NOT saying that they didn't lose weight, but I want to look good, not better. Con. 

4. Signing up. To keep from being super congested, they 'schedule' appointments for working out. Makes sense, keeps you accountable, but I'm not sure I want to schedule an appointment for working out. Pro and Con.

It was fun to set foot into a place I'd never been before, and probably never would have gone had I not received a free week, is it bad though that I felt like I was fast-forwarding the old-mom thing by working out at Curves?