Fit to Cruise

February 12, 2019 Standard Magazine 4 min read

It’s already the second month of 2019 and I’m pleased to say that the dark energies of 2018 appear to have stayed there and I for one am extremely grateful.

I’ve just returned from a five-day Caribbean cruise hosted by WOD on the Waves. WOD stands for Workout of the Day. Its the world’s first fitness cruise where you can break out of the box and celebrate all of your blood, sweat and tears. Train hard and party harder with some of the fittest athletes on earth. Well, that’s what their ads say, anyway!

I’d like to say that I was in top form but as I’ve been reporting my level of fitness took a big hit after I attempted to alleviate my food allergies by doing intermittent fasting.

So rather than being in tip top shape, I got on board the Royal Caribbean ship in Miami, feeling a bit out of sorts. After a week of rain and overcast skies in Palm Springs, my sinuses were still a bit wonky and I somehow ended up with a slight tummy problem that left me feeling less than 100%. But, I had faith that I was going to use the 5-day cruise to regenerate my body. Happily my mind and spirit were in good standing.

This cruise had not been on my 2019 agenda but rather became available to me through my absolutely amazing nephew, Andrew, who’s ex-boyfriend and still B.F.F., had access to it from Instagram. Devin has over 50,000 followers on Instagram and was contacted by WOD offering him a bank of rooms in exchange for advertising. He then extended his offer to Andrew who in turn offered it to me.

It took me about a second to accept his generosity because I will be on the Atlantis cruise when this month’s edition of The Standard is released and wanted to be in better shape for it. I figured this was the perfect way to achieve my goal and perhaps get hired on WOD’s next cruise! Hey, they say to dream big, right? And, why not. I hoped that your Dancing Queen would stand out amongst the other guests and win over some new friends.

So, off I went on this new adventure. I was also intrigued by the fact that it was not a gay cruise and that I would be surrounded by people with fitness as a focus, something that I have never been a part of before. To be honest up until the very recent past, I had always been led by my heart and maybe my hormones! If those 2 boxes got ticked off I would dive right into a relationship never considering that the person and I had little to nothing else in common. So being a part of a fitness cruise at least gave me a leg up, so to speak.

Like Atlantis, WOD touted that they liked to party and had themed parties like Toga & 80’s night, so I packed just a few of my outfits and headed out. If all else failed I knew I could probably out-dance anyone on the boat and was leaving the rest up to destiny.

Well, Destiny was not on my side but to be honest there was a rather large bodybuilder, (think of a Caucasian Refrigerator Perry) who fancied me from the first second he saw me. It was rather funny to me because he was 4 times my size and I’m sure as people go a nice fella, but definitely not my type. At the same time he was the only guy who seemed to notice me, as I was about 30-40 years older than the average girl on board! Oh well, I tried!

So, the trend for fitness is what I expected. It’s all about Crossfit and Surge, along with new fangled varieties of many of the classic exercises I learned 40+ years ago.

I saw more women with incredible shoulders that I know they worked very hard for, but I pray will not cause them problems years from now. Maybe the trend then will be to have shoulder replacements along with knee replacements. I say this because I watched so many people using bad form when it came to Crossfit activities, squats and walking lunges and overhead presses.

It also scared me to know how many of these kids are on heavy steroids, growth hormone, fat burners and energy drinks to achieve the body of today only to suffer the consequences of tomorrow. Any natural hormone package that they were born with will be knocked out of the park and I predict that the days of Andropause and Menopause will be occurring at younger and younger ages! But, hey that’s just me!

By Jill Langham