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Thursday, December 9, 2010

I Heart Fitness Dance

Last Saturday I volunteered for Spa Lady's Aerobathon, which is a 3-hour charity event supporting Santas Anonymous. I taught the yoga segment at the end. Anyway, the event was absolutely wonderful - three full hours of Step, Kickboxing, and (mostly) Zumba. I'm happy to say that I participated from start to finish, although I had to sit out a bit of the last dance because I was starting to get really dizzy. Afterward I was a nasty combination of ravenously hungry and exhausted. I literally fell asleep on my bed with my bowl of lunch next to me upon returning home.

Now the other instructors that volunteered their time were what really made the event. First of all the Step instructors - wow, I have never seen such fancy routines! And such great energy. I truly wish I could have videotaped the event because there was so much awesome material that I would have loved to recycle. As for Zumba - which I love, love, love - aside from the fabulous choreo, one thing I definitely learned was how much an instructor's energy contributes to the class. There was one instructor in particular who was literally radiating with energy and joy. Her movements were sharp and hard-hitting of course, but she had this beautiful smile on her face and you got the feeling that she might be the kind of person who never tired. I remember being halfway through the Zumba segment and feeling my body start to fatigue, and then it was her turn: the energy in the room lifted, and for the 5 minutes that she taught I didn't feel tired at all and my body felt lifted with renewed energy. It was almost like magic.

However! They were all wonderful. They wouldn't be successful if they weren't energetic in their own way. I would certainly volunteer my time for the event next year (and in years to come), but I am happy that they only host these events annually. Because literally - it was three straight hours, no planned interludes at all.

As for myself, I taught my very first full Cardio Dance class today :) I had a few weeks to plan for it, and of course I procrastinated so the majority of my choreo was thought up over the past couple of days (in fact, most of it was planned last night). So although I was familiar with my dances, I still had the odd moment during practice where I was like, "Is this the song with the mambos...? What's the chorus...?" So I was kind of nervous. But the class went off without a hitch! It was awesome. It's amazing what adrenaline will do for you. I hope I can teach again next Thursday to get in some more practice, and who knows, I may have my own class on the schedule pretty soon.

Next Monday I'm going to try my hand (foot?) at teaching a Step combo in addition to a Step warm-up (which I've already done). Step is an entirely different story of course, and my apprenticeship at the Y has taken a totally unexpected turn in that I'm shadowing more Step classes than Cardio Dance classes. That being said however, I do actually need more practice with Step than with Cardio Dance (which IMHO, and according to my feedback, I am more than ready to teach). So I have a combo made up that I'm really happy with, I just have to practice building up to it and cueing it of course. I also (finally!) found some good Step videos on YouTube. They say that Step is no longer trendy and that it's going out the window, but I disagree. Seriously, if that's true, why is it still one of the more popular classes at any fitness facility?

Closing tangent: during the Aerobathon, they had an Aerobics Care Bear stuffed toy on stage. She stood up, had on a stretch headband and even had her own headset and mic! It was so cute. I need to get me one of those. Wishlist!

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