So this is Rehab

Exercise time again, Tuesday night.
Big crowd, eight people show up.
I am joyful, should be easy, multiple stations, some for rest, some for breathing.
Maybe tonight I can keep the gloves up.
Trainer walks in, no really leaps in, bad sign, energy seems really high, hair looks sweaty, she comments on the smell of mildew in the room. I wonder, so this is the smell of “fear” and pain. Stations called out. A runner is the timer, three laps, a push up station: 50 pushups: No s--t, did she say 50? Ryan looks over; yeah I think she said 50. Next, the squat station, 50 then flip to the pushup. Next station, crunches, partner doing curls with 50 or 30 pounds, your choice. Yeah, I’m sure I will do 30 pounds with every one watching, guess again. The jump rope is next followed by the heavy bag and then the speed bag and then sparring with the mitts, oh yeah and don’t forget the slip line and start over again.
The music CD goes in, an eclectic mix featuring such bands as Disturbed, actually rapidly becoming my favorite group.
The process starts. Everyone goes hard at it for the first couple of minutes but the runner seems slow and the intensity drops a notch as all begin thinking of pacing themselves to get through the class.
Switch, comes the yell as the runners staggers in and drops to begin the pushups or drops to resupply his head with blood which has most likely pooled in the lower extremities and gut.
She stalks the room, I imagine us looking like a Zebra herd, knowing a lioness is walking the perimeter. Anxious, pawing the ground, who will fall tonight, a random thought and then the image of the Zebra being disemboweled jumps into my mind, a sight so common on nature shows.
The narrator always explains how the weak are culled and really most of the time they are ready to become the next lion meal, probably out of a shared vision of a bigger picture.
If you believe that then you must have fallen asleep in some class on self preservation.
Everyone advances to the next station and the next and the next and I notice when doing the pushups that my arms have turned purple from the fingers to the elbows. Either this is due to lack of blood flow or my oxygen levels are in the basement.
Then I am putting the gloves on and putting them on the wrong hands, this answers my previous question, the oxygen levels are in the basement and the old brain cells are running slower. This is further confirmed when she tells me, one two and I throw a two, drop my hands loose my balance and try to brush off the next punch by slapping at her mitt.
She has found the weakened Zebra and in spite of the nature narrator I am not ready to go down as a defeated pile of oxygen starved tissue.
I focus, get through the punching, and actually make it through the second round by reaching way down deep finding some last reserve and moan internally when she says now for abs.
Immediately she picks up her ears as if saying, “Did I hear a (Zebra) whimper”?