Getting into the classroom and claiming your spot on the studio floor is like a Knicks-Bulls game in overtime. The slamming you see on the rugby field? The full-force body-checking you watch at professional ice hockey games? Nothing, compared to the elbow jabbing, hip-checking, backpack-battering mayhem that erupts as we attempt to squeeze through the single door into the workout studio. Watch out, that water bottle's loaded and the safety catch is off; you're going to be sloshed! Duck! She's carrying a purse the size of an armoire and I think it's loaded - with leg weights!

It's like merging on a particularly vicious freeway where your fellow travelers are dressed in tights, thongs and silver metallic sauna shorts. At the heart of the struggle is - what else in New York? - Real estate. In this case, a prime spot on the exercise floor.

At my aerobics studio and at most others across the city, country and the world, we women know the drill. Those just finished with their class know better than to try to exit while we're on our way in; rather than be flattened by stampeding hordes of satin-clad Amazons, they stand aside, backs pressed against the studio wall and watch, eyes wide, as we pour through the doorjamb, a multicolored mob running in a panicked frenzy as if it were a give-away at the doughnut shop; charging toward the "best" spots (the ones in the very front with the full-length mirror view), or just a spot claimed out of some neurotic habit.

Once inside, personal workout space is claimed, staked out and protected as strictly as territory delineated in the Treaty of Versailles. Water bottles and aerobic shoes are dropped into little white piles all over the room as boundaries are marked. Women stand stiffly, hands on hips, legs wide, defying anyone to enter their tiny exercise realms. Any negotiations for additional space are purely symbolic: No one's budging. Latecomers plead for an extra inch or two, attempting to nab even the tiniest view of themselves in the mirrors from their spots at the back of the room, next to the dreaded radiators. (Next to the radiators is no-man's land, where you spend the whole class trying not to back into a hot metal picket.) They'll get an inch if they're lucky - if the leotard-wearer blocking them shifts to the side that much - granting maybe a view of a shoulder or a hip. But once all the invisible lines on the hardwood floor are drawn, and the exercise music starts, the battle really begins.

You just don't know how frightening exercise can be until you've experienced an aerobics class. This is a world where women's thighs run the show, and don't let anybody kid you, there's no better place to experience that truth than in a mirror-lined room with 25 women who are not completely happy with their figures. You can read their minds: "Why do I have to have hips at all? I'm obviously never going to have children!" they're thinking, as they rip off their jackets and throw backpacks helter skelter under the coat rack.

"I love this class," one woman says to another. You can tell she's lying because she's earlier made reference to the fact that this teacher is the hardest. "You get a really good workout with Don!" she assured a newcomer. Translated, she really means, "I made it through the class without actually crying and I want the world to know!"

We'd all rather be home watching Oprah, let's be honest. And yet, we women do love an event where we get to see what everyone else is wearing. It's like a party, only with fewer clothes. There's the American Beauty, whose socks and shoes always match her jogbra. I don't know how she does it, but somehow she manages to pull it off three times a week. Then there's The Dancer, wearing leg warmers and what look like sauna shorts. This woman is the picture of grace. She knows what they're talking about when they order an arabesque, while the rest of us are just throwing our legs out in back, trying not to look like a dog burying something behind him. Inevitably there's a Patti Smith - female rocker - look-alike, looking for that sculpted look cigarettes and coffee alone just can't accomplish, sporting black high-tops, a leather bustier and fishnet support-hose. And finally there are the usual types that populate every exercise studio: The ones who are carved and chiseled into shapes that make marble sculptures look dumpy; the ones in full make-up who reapply their lipstick just before class; and those new to exercise: Who never put on a tennis shoe prior to 1991 and who think the weights in the weight room are car parts…

Once the instructor starts the warm-up, the ones up front had better be good (or at least have sharp outfits), because if they don't, the ones behind will try to usurp their territory with intimidating aerobic thrusts and lunges within inches of their backs. Floorboard by floorboard, interlopers try to "grapevine" (step, cross, step, kick!) into each other's aerobic space. Some women protect their fiefdoms by jumping wildly, flailing their bodies in such a way there's a chance of suffering grave bodily harm if you find yourself on their "property". We've all learned the hard way to stay far back from the one who flings her beaded braids in a mad whirlpool of aerobic enthusiasm. Think "Ben Hur", and lethal, protruding spokes on chariot wheels…

Then there are the ones who attempt figure intimidation; flaunting their iron hard bodies in thongs and modified G-strings; whose design defies all warnings that loud patterns make you look fat. "What are YOU doing here!" the rest of us scream silently. Since they're always in the front row, we stand behind them, fuming. We dodge their sculpted butts as they swing their way toward us during the squats, and have to stagger our kicks so we don't boot them into the next row. Every once in a while though, I let a high kick fly and I fan 'em, like a pitcher fans back the batter, just to let 'em know I'm back there. It's every woman for herself, truly survival of the fittest, and also of those whose outfits fit best.

So we all have our strategies and this is mine: I go to class three times a week. I wear the baggiest T-shirt I can scrounge up, a pair of my ex-boyfriend's boxer shorts, one long sock and one short sock, and my tennis shoes from junior high (they're plaid). I limp into the back row right before the class starts, dragging my step platform behind me. I position it upside down like a blue canoe and then I stand there pretending to ponder the mystery of where the risers go until the instructor, with a thinly veiled look of contempt, suggests I come up front, since I'm obviously an exercise moron.

It's been six weeks now and he still hasn't caught on. I've managed to get to the front row every time and, although I never look as cool as the women who surround me, I'm happy. Like finding a cheap one-bedroom apartment, it's my little real estate victory. The front row, across from the mirror; the best piece of property in the whole studio!

So let it be a lesson to outsiders: Aerobics are not to be taken lightly. As we improve our bodies, we hone other skills. Strategy, negotiation and finally, compromise come into play within these mirrored walls. And once we get up to speed, we're a force to be reckoned with: For 40 minutes, we women move with the music, in step, as one, together! (Well, somewhat together.) We become a team, a unit, a unified wedge of cardioactive machinery! Give us a task and we'll complete it, as one!!

Just don't stand in front of us.

The above article, copyright Debra C. Victoroff, was published in 1998 in the Staten Island Advance and has been reproduced on this web site with the author's permission.