After a little research, I decided to order a PiYo DVD so I could start getting serious about working out. You know, really committing myself. And PiYo seemed like a reasonable answer to a self-proclaimed hedonist who wants to exercise as long as it's not Too Hard.

So this morning, on the First Full Day I have been home in almost a month, I decided to whip that baby out and give her a whirl. First I went for a jog, which felt something like giving birth, since in the last 27 days I have taken no more than 18 steps on any given day. I started out running down the street with plans of conquering my three mile, up-a-giant-hill route, but at about .27 miles began to rationalize that if I really wanted to do my PiYo I should not be too aggressive on my run, so I turned around at .73 miles and after doing the up-a-small-hill route, and jogged back home. To be fair, it was my second fastest time doing a run under two miles (1.32 total), but my first fastest doesn't really count since I accidentally switched Runkeeper on when I drove over to the Middlesworth's last time. I will be hard pressed to beat that half mile in 2.01 minutes.

Anyway after my run, and beginning to seriously second guess whether anything was really worth this much suffering, I popped in the DVD, unfurled my yoga mat and grabbed my water. I thought it was a little odd that the people on the video didn't have yoga mats. And they were all wearing shoes, which seemed rather un-yogaish, but not being super familiar with the Pilates side of things I figured I would just go with it.

The DVD started off with some jumping jacks and running in place and some other spastic things that I am sure that I nailed. I was feeling pretty confident that I could keep up, but then I noticed the little banner at the bottom of the screen said we were in the middle of the three minute warm up. That was disappointing, to say the least.

When the trainer started into the actual rounds of real moves, they were all these leaping squat things, and lunging-jump-twist contortions that weren't much like any pilates I have seen, but I was still up for being a good sport and kept trouncing along, sort of like an elephant on a broken trampoline. About halfway into the stupid thing I was still waiting for the yoga moves to kick in, and during one of the rest breaks I picked up the DVD case to see if these people even knew what PiYo was supposed to be.

Turns out, in a fit of dyslexia, or maybe an Amazon ordering binge complemented by a bottle of merlot, I had ordered a DVD of a PLYO workout, not a PiYo routine, and my friends, let me tell you, the two are very different. In fact, as one google-question-answerer put it, they are completely opposite. Plyometrics operate on the principles of muscle confusion and aggressive bursts of high impact movement, whereas PiYo is intended as a graceful flowing low impact routine for core strengthening and flexibility.

Not to be put to shame by my own silliness, I finished the DVD (except for the rounds that were all shoulder moves) and now I am pretty sure I will never walk again. But I am still interested in trying PiYo. Maybe I can borrow it from my BFF to avoid future ordering mishaps.