The above photo of a graceful woman, exercising with ease and strength? It isn’t me. It’s some chick in Wikimedia Commons.

I’m the woman off-screen with an expression I usually reserve for opening stubborn jars of Prego sauce.

“Just! One! More! Squeeze!”

Pilates made me nauseous last night. It was my first class in over two years, and it beat me.

As I drove home from the gym, my stomach ached as if it just survived Thanksgiving dinner plus four shots of rum. Not good. Maybe it had something to do with the crazy lady wearing sweats who asked me to do 100 crunches, followed by 5 billion other things that made my entire body ache.

On the drive to the gym, I remembered my last Pilates class. I went to the class once a week for four months in Bulgaria, so I considered myself … well … not terrible. I was wrong.

But then, my teacher in Bulgaria only spoke Russian, and I do not speak Russian. (But I did learn to count to three in Russian during that class. Eras! Va! Tree! Seriously, three is tree in Russian.) I went to Russian Pilates with my friend, Elizabeth, and we tried our best to mirror what everyone else was doing. I remember bragging to my roommate that I was never sore from Pilates. I thought it was due to my abs of steel and general Wonder-Woman-esque physique. Actually, it was because I was doing it ALL WRONG.

(However, the Russian teacher saved 15 minutes at the end of each class to teach amateur strip-tease moves. This made Elizabeth and me very uncomfortable, and we left early.)

The second I removed my fuzzy winter boots for American Pilates last night, I knew I was in over my head. All the other girls wore cool sports-girl socks with neat, black check marks on the ankle. My socks were a mismatched polka dot print.

As I grabbed a mat, I was warned by a sweet, “I’m-50-but-my-skin’s-so-tight-I-look-30” Pilates veteran, who told me we would also need a mat cushion, small ball, Big Ball, Big Ball stand and strap. I decided to grab it all in one trip, and promptly knocked two Big Balls down from their five-foot shelf. My bad.

This instructor, a firm-voiced, “I’m-50-but-my-butt-cheeks-look-20” Pilates goddess, began us with what I call modern torture in sweats. One hundred crunches, our legs in the air. Twist this, pull that. It was like sadistic Twister.

Over the course of the hour, I tried (and failed) to hold in my laughter every time I heard “Grab your Big Ball.” I swear, this lady actually prefaced one Big Ball exercise with, “I don’t know why people struggle with this, unless they have gluteal amnesia.”

Yes. Gluteal amnesia. Don’t laugh – millions of people suffer, including me. I was was the only woman there who, after resting my front half on the Big Ball, couldn’t pick my legs off the ground by sheer power of my ass. I ended up resting on my Big Ball with my “can’t open the spaghetti sauce jar” face, and my legs stayed on the ground.

No one else struggled with this. The “my-butt-cheeks-look-20” instructor swept her legs over her head and bent her body like a pretzel, and I flailed like a paraplegic lobster, then gave up and started laughing. Variations of the “Impossible Exercise Looks Easy, But Kathleen Finds it Impossible and Starts Laughing Before Collapsing” occurred regularly for the rest of the hour.

But seriously- this instructor has my admiration. I, on the other hand, would be the worst Pilates teacher. For one thing, I’m terrible at Pilates. For another, I laugh too much. (Big Balls and spirit-woman-mountain-tone-music! Come on!) But most importantly, I am not a strong disciplinarian. If I was a Pilates instructor, it would sound something like:

“OK, so we want to focus on the gluteal amnesia to grab the Big Ball and count to 500,000 … Oh, you’d rather sit down and watch ‘This Old House’? Well yeah, that’s a good show. We deserve a break after that 10-second stretch … OK that’s lunch!”

I’m obviously exaggerating, but there’s some truth in this. That’s why I exercise in groups – I need a stronger disciplinarian than myself.

I am sore this morning, especially in my abs and my butt.

My ego is particularly bruised. I’m used to being really good at things and when I suck at things, I do other things, like sit on the floor and watch “This Old House.” I’m super good at that.

I know this is a terrible life-philosophy, and I’m working on it. Grad school applications are tough, especially when one has to create their poetry portfolio from scratch and hope it holds a candle to portfolios by people who have studied poetry for years in order to get into one of the most competitive graduate school programs in the nation. So I’m working harder on this than I have ever worked on anything.

Anyway, I think the secret is to success is to want something badly enough that you’ll go through ego-bruising humiliation every day to get it. And I really do want better glutes.