Welcome to my newest means of torturing myself. It's brought to me by the good people at Reebok University.

It's offered as a class at my gym, taught by a perky blonde woman named April. Some stereotypes are stereotypes for a REASON. I mean, what happens? When a baby girl is born do parents know by looking at her, "Hey, she's gonna grow up to be 5 foot 4, 112 pounds, with a butt you can rest a beer on. Let's name her APRIL. Or Heather! Or AMBER! That lifelong plan to name her Martha after grandma is SO over!" Or, once a child is named April, or Heather, does she automatically transform into a looker?

I'm going too far with this. Yes, I'm stretching. However, I just had one of those moments, gathering all my equipment, looking up at this hot blonde aerobics teacher named April, when the world made sense. I smiled to myself, and shook my head, and went, "Yep."  Too good not to share. I tried the class for the first time on Friday, because I've been going to the gym a lot but want to avoid the boredom that typically sets in after a month of regular exercise. I'm sick of kickboxing for the moment, and step class every day will kill my knees over the long term. And yes, I would like to see the proof on the scale, which so far is moving way too slow for my liking. I think this will be good.

Because, it turns out, April is a good teacher. She knows her stuff. She led us through 50 minutes of resistance training with bands, free weights, those wacky, scary weight bars, and a step for a place to sit to do dips (which, in my execution, are more appropriately called "diplets" or perhaps "dribbles". ) and then abs. And all of this crazy fun takes place to a jacked up soundtrack of popular tunes, provided by Reebok, interspersed with WHISTLE CUES. This is called periodization, mostly because nothing is ever simple and must be called something complicated. This periodization "is a proven technigue for getting real results while keeping your choreographed workouts fresh without frustrating training plateaus."

It is also completely obnoxious. I never imagined myself working out to an aerobicized version of a Kid Rock or Coldplay song, and to tell the truth, I kinda had to put artistic integrity - and the whistles - out of my mind. But it does keep your ass in motion, which I guess means there's some kind of circuit benefit to it too. Interval training. Hallelujah.

I'm extremely sore today, which must mean something worked, unless I just broke myself again. And I think I'm going to see if I can drop in at Gold's when I'm in South Carolina, because if I take off a whole week I'm going to hate it when I come home.