Bodypump

As the instructor would say, I’m about to join the ranks of 70,000 instructors worldwide who survived the certification training for the largest branded group fitness class in the world. Currently I’m in the middle on the most physically intense weekend in my life. I did and didn’t know what I was getting myself into (all to teach at the Y). Survivor meets Army Boot Camp meets American Idol Hollywood Week meets high school danceline tryouts. The choreography we need to learn makes these days more than mentally challenging as well. Luckily we have only “Paula” and “Randy” judges and no Simon. If you want to see a picture of our male instructor go to the website www.lesmills.com and he’s on the front page (before the other pictures start flashing). He flew in from Pennsylvania to spread his bodypump enthusiasm.

Yesterday’s training went from 9.5 hours long, then we got home at 10:30 p.m. (after finally eating dinner and then grocery shopping to have food for today since we all learned the hard way our breaks aren’t long enough to leave the building) and had to learn a back and glute workout routine to a song that was 6 minutes long. Then we had to be back at 8 this morning and got done at 6:10 this evening. We went 3 hours some times without even a short break. My bladder was in pain several times because if we had to leave the class when it was not a break time, we owed 20 pushups when we got back. Tomorrow we start at 7 a.m. Tonight I “only” have to learn a 3 minute routine. It’s 9, but I am writing because we were instructed to take a little mental break for ourselves. I just got back to the room because I needed to go shopping for our requirement to wear black and/or red for our assessment tomorrow.

The lowlight of this weekend is my severe lack of muscles compared to the other participants who already take this class regularly. The other women are very inspring though, and I know I’m on my way back there again. Even the women in their 50s were super cut and seemed decades younger with their energy level.

The highlight was the “Ultimate Bodypump Challenge”. After completing a 15 minute run and then the hour-long bootcamp where we had to push our limits on some of the weight exercises to show we can do more than we think – especially when we have a partner cheering us on, he set us up for what he said was the ultimate feat of Bodypump weekend, the 5 minute wall sit. He said nobody’s stopping until they fall down, you’d better not be able to stand up and walk away, and we’ll see how long you guys can last… This was a test of endurance and I knew I had an edge here (muscular strength and endurance are somewhat opposites), but still the longest I’d ever held the pain of a wall sit was 1 minute. The 3 men in the class of 23 were among the first to drop (to their credit men have a lower percentage of the endurance muscle fibers). The strongest woman dropped after about 1:30 and slowly the fittest of the fit each gave way. Myself and 3 others made it to the end. I was shaking and yelling and I had a crowd cheering me on to get me through the last impossible 30 seconds. Afterwards I was in tears. I don’t know if I’ve ever pushed myself that hard before.

I don’t know if I will pass tomorrow. There are no “fails” but I may have to come back and go through another Saturday again – and all the pain of that hardest middle day. This won’t be of course for a few more months and meanwhile I wouldn’t be able to teach. I’m having a lot of trouble concentrating on the choreography and my technique at the same time; the fatigue of these last few months is definitely showing up here. So if you read this on time, pray! Back to work….