Back In The Gym {A Three Things Thursday Post}

The key to the aerobics room. The key to the stereo. The muscles in my inner thighs.

I forgot a lot of things in the seven weeks or so I was away from the YMCA but they came back to me slowly as I made my (not so) grand return to teaching on Monday.

1. My first class was barbell but while I was away, the sub was teaching boot camp. As it turns out, the members really prefer boot camp to barbell. Like, a lot. One of the participants asked during the warmup if the whole class was going to be "like this" and was going to leave. Apparently, barbell is boring. So, I dropped my ego and told everyone to grab dumbbells.

I was rather amazed at my ability to throw together a workout on the fly but I did. We worked for 45 seconds intervals and each round had four exercises: a basic leg, cardio, isometric leg and cardio. It worked and everyone was shaking at the end.

2. Tuesday was boot camp* as scheduled but I was really thrown off by a participant who asked what kind of boot camp I taught. She liked how the sub had been teaching and lamented that others just fill the classes with a lot of squats. I think she was on the verge of leaving when I promised that there would be more than squats. And there was but there were also squats because ... obviously, squats are awesome.

I spent the whole class worried about whether the workout was good enough, varied enough, hard enough. I kept wondering whether she liked it. And when I had two spots of confusion, I freaked that she was not going to come back or complain. Because I'm crazy and self conscious.

Thank goodness I included burpees because burpees = boot camp well done.

A plea: I know, from experience, that one can get attached to a particular instructor and enjoy one person's class over another. Everyone has different personalities and styles, and so much of group fitness is about finding a good match. But, please, give a new person

3. To shake up the schedule, my director is trying out Piloxing on Wednesdays instead of barbell when I was rambling off my certifications. It's been more than a year since I taught the class and ... yeah. I had to do some cramming, mostly in the form of binge watching choreo DVDs and YouTube instructor applications.

The class didn't go perfectly but I had a decent turnout and I remembered most of what I was doing. Today, I remember how much that class can hurt. Like in the triceps and inner thighs. It's especially fantastic since I was still sore from Monday.

I also rediscovered just how much fun it is to throw some punches and jump around.

An aside: Piloxing has a couple of new formats that I'm dying to try/get certified in. I'm not sure they would be a good fit for my Y nor in line with my goals to specialize in special populations but they look fun. Barre is, well, barre and Knockout looks intense. The master trainer in our area posted a video of pike jumps that looked insane. I think part of the draw is that if I could do the certification, that I'd be in rad shape.

*Here are my thoughts on programming boot camp classes.