Zumba

Exercise

| cheriarmour

So update on today.  On yesterday.  Ugh I don’t even knowwww my sense of time is completely nonexistent right now.  But I returned to work for a partial day – and dropped Liam off for his first day of care.  I scrambled for hours – filling bottles and packing lunches, and woke up beyond too early for the morning, and ultimately, did okay.  I cried when we dropped him off, to the point where a little girls’ mother told me she’d felt similarly, and that I would be okay.  She advised me to come a few times next week, hang out, nurse him when I could, and that he would be okay.  To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure how I’m going to do with a full work day yet, but more than a few people have reminded me that no decision is permanent, and that I have a decent enough skill set that I could stay, or take a break, or maybe work from home, or freelance, or whatever.  Nothing is final at this point.

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So, I was cleared at six weeks to exercise, which, looking back, was maybe not okay.  Thankfully, I’m not training for the Olympics or appearing on a magazine cover anytime soon, so I really eased into things, and didn’t get too crazy about immediately returning to exactly what I was doing prior to having Liam.

As a side note, we really need to talk about that six-week clearance mark, but we’ll do that later.  I have a lot of words on that.  

Being active is really important to me.  Not necessarily being in a bikini, or looking hot, but being active for the sake of a little energy boost, for the way it makes me feel, and for the fact that it makes the after-workout shower so much more rewarding, it’s really important to me.  So I’ve done a little bit of everything since I’ve felt okay to do so, and I’ve slowly started building back to some level of the strength that I had, while slowly taking off the last of the weight I gained when I was pregnant with my sweet boy.  Here’s what I’ve done, and how it’s felt.

Running

I think the week I was cleared, I went for a short “run” (really, a shuffle), of just a mile, up and down the street we live on.  It was ok, and very clear that I wouldn’t be running 20 miles anytime soon.  Because it because pretty clear after that mile that though I could do it, that it wasn’t perfect, I’ve sort of only run once a week, and have really relied on walking with some hill intervals or repeats on days I’m looking to sweat.

Circuit Training

One of my first workouts back was a circuit at a local studio, Core, located just outside of downtown Raleigh.  Again, I tried to play it safe and smart, and modified anything that didn’t feel great.  A full plank still was painful in the pubic bone region, as were mountain climbers, and instead of crunches, I did some modification on a modified plank, and worked it that way.  What I really, really enjoyed was getting my heart rate up, which we did with the treadmill, some sled pushes, and some very modified burpees.  This was one of the first times I found myself sore since I gave birth.

Gentle Hot Yoga

This was my first formal yoga class in a long while.  This class, taught at Indigo Hot Yoga, is really nice because it’s a good workout, but the supportive and sweet instructor provided plenty of modifications, which I needed.  I am really surprised by how much strength, upper body strength especially, that I lost after having the baby, and this has helped me get it back.  Another unexpected benefit of this class is that the sweating and heat forces me to drink more water, and I think that, plus some love hormone gives me a little milk boost.

Barre3

I took this class at the suggestion of the dietitian at work.  She had a favorite instructor, one who had a wait list for her class.  So I signed up four or five days in advance, and went at 6am, when I knew I could go and get back home before the baby woke up and I could feed him.  The class was really good.  Not a ton of cardio, and I like cardio, but the strength and toning were good, and this class actually got me pretty sore!  I will be signing up for this one again, budget permitting.

Zumba

I hit this old trusty class on Black Friday, and it was good.  It wasn’t my favorite instructor, but she did a good enough job, and it was a decent amount of cardio after I stuffed myself at Thanksgiving.  Some things still don’t feel great, so I kept the higher impact stuff, like little hops or jumps, to a minimum.

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A little heart rate info after Zumba.  Zumba is uniquely one of those things that really gets you to your peak a few times, sort of like interval training.  You won’t get that with gentle yoga or barre generally.  

Orangetheory

This workout was really interesting.  So, I went with a few friends the Saturday morning after Thanksgiving in North Raleigh.  The visit started off well enough, because I called to set up my class, and the woman that answered the phone was so friendly, that I was really excited to go.  Class started at 9:30am, and they asked that as new people, we get there at 9.  I was admittedly running late, and I got there at 9:10am, and I thought I’d be walking into the coach demoing moves, or a safety talk, but what I walked into was a repeat of the questions that I’d answered on the phone, and a sales pitch.

Once class started, it became clear that this would be one of the harder workouts I’ve done, and by the end, I was sweating a ton, especially since we ended with treadmill intervals.  The workout was monitored with a heartrate monitor, and since I’m breastfeeding, I had to do a wrist strap, which seemed to not work for most of the class.  One of the friends I was with experienced the same with her chest strap, which was disappointing.  But by the end, I think it was clear to all of us that this was a really good workout, despite some of the sales pitchy weirdness at the beginning.

Here’s what was kind of off-putting.

Upon class ending, I was on a high.  The coach and a desk manager person held us back in the studio, and then the manager was on us like a cheap suit to talk to us, mostly me since I was local, about packages.  I made it pretty clear that I was planning on dropping in once in a while since I’m still recovering, and I still felt like I was being pushed into buying a package.  I had a baby weeks ago.  So I was pretty weirded out by that.

Following that, I got a phone call from the studio checking in, presumably to sell me stuff, and then I got an email after.  I finally sent an email back, and explained that though the workout was great (one of the better HIIT ones I’ve done in Raleigh), that the pushiness was really quite off-putting.  To which that manager replied that she was sorry, but they just wanted to inform me of their membership options.  GAH.  It’s like it didn’t sink in, at all.  People love to be checked-on, but not sold to from 78 different angles.

That said, the workout was really good, and I will most likely visit another location, Morrisville or Wake Forest before I go to North Raleigh again. I know these guys are pretty much all over, so if you get a chance, I would try this workout out, especially since I feel like these kinds of workouts are really effective for building muscle and losing weight.

So these classes, along with the Fitbit update that encourages you to get 5 days a week of exercise in, has really helped me get my activity levels back up.  Again, I’m taking it nice and easy.  There’s no sense in hurting myself or my milk supply for the sake of saying I did it.  Rather, it’s just really really nice, and a nice way for me to take a short break from momming at 99 mph.

How have you exercised this week?  

 

What Koh taught me.

| cheriarmour

I hope you guys had a great Thanksgiving.  I went to Charlotte to have Thanksgiving dinner at my mother-in-law’s house, and spent a few days hanging out.  I’m actually writing now from the kitchen table in her house!

So, Thanksgiving day, I manged to not do a ton of damage – I ate a good bit, but broke up the day with a lot of walking, so I didn’t feel AS slobby as I could have, but nevertheless, I went ahead and poked around on some of the local Y sites to see what classes they were running on Black Friday.  I stumbled across a super familiar name – Koh – for Zumba, and immediately set my alarm so I could go to hear class on Friday morning.

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If you sorta remember that name, it’s because I ran into Koh at DCAC, and she was the first person in the history of the world that I ever took Zumba with. I went Zumba->get licensed->teach at State->teach at camp->decide I wanted to do something with my life that involved group fitness->the Y, which I love, so as I planned to go to this class, the weight sort of started to hit me, that all of this was coming full circle.

I got to the Harris Y, about 30 minutes from Sharon’s house, about 10 minutes before class started.

First, as an aside, the Harris Y is the most monstrously huge Y I have ever seen in my life. And I’m very familiar with Siskey. But this Y had a separate building for youth programs, and the grownup side kinda seemed like a small city. But in a good way, because the guy in membership who helped me come in and get settled was absolutely as sweet as pie.

Anyhoo, I got to class, and once we got started, I felt completely in my element. Koh really likes to pump her music, so once you got into each of the songs (that she ended on a pose, mind you), it was sort of like being lost in your own fitnessy world. I smiled, clapped, and at one point when we were dancing salsa, she pulled me to the front of the room with a few folks, smack-dab in the middle, to dance, while she attended to the other side of the studio.

I left that class sweaty, happy, and ready to go for a little longer. In fact, we were able to convince her to let us repeat a Michael Buble song because we’d all enjoyed it so much and felt like we could do it better than we had the first time. So she obliged!

I think the cool thing about returning to a teacher that you went to way back is that you begin to remember how it feels to be a student, and you remember the subtle nuances that you’d like to incorporate into classes to make people feel as good as your instructor is making you .

Koh Taught (still teaches!) me:

  • Be happy.  Every movement she hits, Koh acts as if it’s the most wonderful thing she has ever done.  This spreads to the class.  Maybe it’s a complex movement.  Maybe not.  Maybe it’s really really silly and might look a little funny.  She still executes it with the best attitude ever.
  • Keep it simple.  Koh is great.  BUT, she waves her wand over the classes, and it lets you know that you don’t have to be the best dancer for this class to work its magic on you.  But just in case you do want to be the best, she communicates through really really simple movements.  Things are logical – a move for the verse, a move for the chorus, and a move for the bridge.  No real rocket science there.  But it works!  So no one feels like an idiot in class because things are SO ridiculously easy to follow!
  • It’s not about you.  I’ve phrased this 60 million different ways irl and on the blog.  And I’ll say it some more.  But there is no one on earth more entitled to a big fat head than someone like Koh, who was a master presenter for Zumba® Fitness for a long time.  Her classes are consistently packed.  She could regard it as the Koh Experience.  But instead, she has made it so that you leave the class feeling like you were the star.  She’ll dance with students.  Point out when someone is doing awesome.  Allow the veterans to lead class for a little while.  Mingle during.  And generally, make it an unspoken point to communicate that she’s here for your workout, not her own.

Of course, I totally wanted more after because I was just buzzing with excitement, but I checked the schedules of the 3 Ys around, and there’s nothing super interesting going on.  Which means I’ll have to bite it and actually pay for a class and run tomorrow instead of getting into a class at the Y.

And with all that sweating, I’m not absolutely terrified to look at a scale sideways on Monday.

How did you stay fit this Thanksgiving?

Fitness instructors, leave your ego at the door.

| cheriarmour

I’ve been teaching fitness officially since 2010.  I’d been taking Zumba classes from the time I was about 16 until 20 or so, and the entire time, had been really curious about what it would take, and what it meant to teach.  I somehow got the balls to hunt around, and contacted the woman at NC State, the graduate school where I was attending, my first semester there, and asked if she was interested in a Zumba instructor.  The next thing I knew, I was teaching to a staff at a staff meeting, and without realizing it, my future husband may have been in that meeting.

But Lindsay, who managed us, took a chance on me, and after a short 20-minute demo, she allowed me to get onto the spring schedule one day a week.  And the response was absolutely overwhelming.  I regularly had over 100 students in the class, and as my class gained traction, I began to look forward to my time on Sundays with the students.

One thing I remembered, and one thing that I took with me in my time taking classes with Koh Herlong, who apparently was a Zumba superstar and we never knew it, left her ego at the door when it came to class.  She worked the room, starting from the front, and dancing in the crowd, dancing with students, and pointing out a nice booty shake or a great-looking bicep when she saw it.  The class wasn’t about her, it was about us.  And we left the room feeling that way each and every time we took the class.

Fitness instructors, your class is not about you. 

I’ve certainly fallen into the trap before.  When a student wants to take a pic with me or when I’ve seen myself talked about in a review of some place I’ve worked, I’ve wanted to dust myself off.  And when I do, I remember that there’s always an instructor who’s better than I am, and that being a decent teacher doesn’t mean shit if I have a bad attitude, or think I’m here for folks to be amazed by me.  There’s nothing amazing about what I do.  I just love to do it.

Zumba Instructor

That said, here are a few reminders for fitness instructors who are starting to feel their heads get a little bigger with each time they catch the eye of someone in their class.

  • The workout doesn’t belong to you.  It’s theirs [your students].  My mom has often asked me why I work out when I teach so many classes, and simply it’s because the energy you devote you your workouts and and workouts you provide to your students is and should be different.  In your classes your focused on the safety, the comfort, and the fun that your students are having, not your own.
  • But don’t give too much…everything needs a little balance.  Don’t give so much that you’re hurt or that you hurt the people in your class.  Balance is key.
  • Open your eyes!  Are you stuck in the mirror?  This is a terrible habit, and a huge pet peeve of mine.  Look around your class.  Face your class.  Look into people’s eyes!  If you find yourself “stuck in the mirror,” as an old tap teacher of mine would say, you’re doing it wrong.  Your class can sense when you’re looking at them, and when you’re checking out your own biceps.  And having an egotistical maniac for an instructor doesn’t do much for people.

And finally…

  • Make ’em feel good.  Folks got in their cars and drove over, not for you to tell jokes, right?  Thank folks for coming.  Introduce yourself.  Point out good work!  Shout encouragement.  Whisper adjustments.

QOTD:

What’s the best/your favorite fitness class you’ve EVER taken?