The good thing about exercising on a hardwood floor is that when your purple happy fun ball of pain, humiliation and torture decides to pitch you face forward on to said floor, you don't get any rug burns, you just scorch your nose slightly!

Oh yes, I'm all about The Positivity.

Today is the first day I attempted the full 20 minute workout that comes on the Purple Happy Fun Ball of Pain Humiliation and Torture Home Workout Video. I was feeling more than a little smug since I was pretty much able to keep up without breaking a sweat until I came to The Exercise That Saps My Will To Live.

The Freak � ooops, did I say that out loud? I meant to say The Trainer made it look deceptively simple.

"Just slide the ball under your tummy, stretch out, balance on your toes and your hands. Then lift one arm and the opposite leg up in the air, arching your back slightly, squeezing your cheeks," coaxed the Dr. Mengele of home exercise videos.

In other words, she wanted me to raise my right arm and left leg at the same time, squeeze my buttal region together, and do this while balancing precariously on a large purple ball on my stomach. Then I was to switch sides every few seconds, lifting my left arm and right leg and so on and so forth.

My first time I lifted my right arm and right leg and spilled off the ball on to the floor on my right side.

DOH.

"OPPOSING arms and legs," I muttered to myself, brushing off various dust bunnies and other debris that had left my floor to adhere to my now sweating body.

I hit the pause button on the VCR. I didn't need the pressure of watching The Trainer glide effortlessly through this exercise.

Gingerly, I got back up on the ball. Tentatively I lifted my right arm and my left leg. Success! Wobbly success, but success nonetheless! Then I tried to focus on the requisite simultaneous butt clenching and It Was Just Too Much. I found myself gliding face forward off the ball.

And the thing was, it wasn't happening that fast, but I was so focussed on holding the form of the exercise that somehow I couldn't get it in my head to drop my right arm and stop myself.

And that's when my nose and the floor had A Close Personal Moment which probably would have resulted in a painful and very hard to explain rug burn had the floor been anything but hardwood.

Oh, stop snickering. Like YOU could do it.

I gave it two more tries and then figured if I kept up at this rate, I would end up with an oh so attractive scab on my nose, even on a wood floor. So I let the video play through The Exercise That Saps My Will To Live for today and did the rest of the workout, throwing in some extra exercises I'd learned at my gym. By the end of 40 minutes on The Purple Happy Fun Ball of Pain, Humiliation and Torture I was satisfyingly sweaty, as sweaty as I got during a gym workout.

Oh, and the bonus here?

I've found that a sweaty woman rolling around on the floor (whether she means to or not) picks up far more debris and does it even more quickly than most cleaning appliances.

Forget the Swifter mop--you want the quicker picker upper, you go for the sweaty woman wrestling with The Purple Happy Fun Ball of Pain, Humiliation and Torture.