Staff Meeting and Whatnot

So my new Monday night class is still pretty slow, and I'd like to blame it on lack of advertising rather than personality flaws and/or funky odor of the instructor. To that end, I'm going to ask my manager if I can put a couple of flyers up in the entrance to advertise that on Halloween (which, conveniently, falls on a Monday) folks are encouraged to come dressed up. Most of the towns around here do the candy part of Halloween on the Saturday before, so I'm hoping folks will actually show up for this.

However, the only clever thing I've thought to put on it is "Exercise the Demons".  I'm a freaking riot.

So any slogans (bearing in mind that this is a relatively conservative gym), pictures, etc that you guys might have...send em over!

Actually, this one might work. Maybe. Is religious wordplay still offensive if it's not referring to anything the clergy did or didn't do?

Blerg

Not that Monday's are my favorite day of the week or anything, but today in particular I just can't seem to get my head in gear. Naturally, it's 4 hours before class tonight and I have no idea what I'm doing. I wish I had the enthusiasm to recruit people like I want to, but today...I'm pretty sure I'm sick, so that's fun. I think I'm going to have a circuit night - I'm not sure I can survive a full workout in this condition, so I'm going to take the slacker route and set up stations and have people go through them a minute at a time. Maybe. Or if no one from the last 3 weeks shows up, maybe I'll just run through a previous workout. I dunno.

So far, these are the "stations" I've come up with (thanks in no small part to Rose's training logs):

Exercise	Body Part Worked	Equipment needed
Dumbbell halo	Upper back, triceps, chest	Heavy dumbbell (8,10,12,15)
Waiter's carry w/walking lunges across gym	Upper body, lower body	Space, 2 x heavy dumbbell
Cobra	Back, hamstrings, glutes	Mat
Medicine ball slam	Upper body	Heavy medicine ball, mat
Skull crushers (or "supine tricep extensions")	Triceps	2 x Medium dummbbells (5,8,10)
Russian twists w/medicine ball, on stability ball	Core	Medicine ball, stability ball
Back flies on stability ball	Back, core	2 x medium dumbbells, stability ball
Squat curls	Upper body, lower body	2 x heavy weights
Body bar skiers (these were fun 2 weeks ago)	Everything	2 x body bars
Single leg squats - right only	Quads, glutes	None or light/medium weights
Single leg squats - left only	Quads, glutes	None or light/medium weights
Pushups	Upper body	Mat
Plank	Upper body	Mat

And then a rest station in there too.
I'm thinking we go through that 4 times total, which gives 12 minutes for warmup/cooldown/extra abs if desired.  Maybe we'll only make it through 3 times, I dunno.

In other news, it was a productive weekend. Yesterday I got the second coat of paint up on the front of the house...YAY! I couldn't get a pic this morning because the light made it look like I'd missed spots, but here's an American Gothic style one from last week with just one coat:

Saturday I went through the Spintensity periodization class, which was great and I can't wait to put to use...the Strength class was good as well, but I'd just done a strength class in June, so it was less exciting.
However, right now I'm at 29 Star points...11 away from level 3, which is one step closer to possibly becoming an Master Instructor someday. Boston Balance is in a couple of weeks as well, and I just impulse bought myself 14 more star points' worth of classes. So by the end of the year I'm going to be a level 3 instructor...which rocks.

I'm also debating making it my new year's goal to be a certified personal trainer by the end of January. It depends a little bit on whether I'm going to need to keep taking classes in the spring, but fingers crossed I don't think that's going to be a necessity. The more cool things I see available (TRX, CrossFit, etc) in the fitness realm, the more time/money I wish I had to devote to getting certified and acting on this stuff. If I had a sugar daddy (or momma, I'm not picky) who'd pay for school for the next 3 years for me, I'd probably be less careful about where/how I spend my money. That said, certification now is sort of an investment in the future...these kinds of things could be helping me pay for school. We'll see.

Anyway, now that I've completely derailed this post, I need to go make some signs for the circuits for tonight. w00t!

Rest Week

Sorry it's been quiet around here this week. Work got busy again, classes are still going (in fact, it's midterms week), and my knee's been bugging me so I've been resting. I had to be in Cambridge for work so I didn't teach Wednesday. Monday night no one showed up (a blessing - I spent 8+ hours painting the house on Monday, so I was WHOOPED).

I stayed at Hotel Marlowe on Tuesday night, and I have to say...I'm a fan.

 They had hula hoops as part of the gym equipment!

And then there was this contraption. It was insane. Apparently it's an Adaptive Motion Trainer. LOVE. Watch the video, but start after 0:35 or so. I wouldn't return this if it were gifted to me. :-D

I used it to to Tabata intervals during Biggest Loser...basically during commercials (almost exactly 3 minutes every time...so long...) I'd do "fast feet" with resistance. It was pretty great. I think I'm going to suggest it to my boss that we get a couple of these when the renovations start. mmmm....

Run!

Holy crap you gys, I'm totally going to run tonight! And maybe even tomorrow morning! The hotel I'm abusing tonight has HULA HOOPS in the gym and yoga on demand in my room...they'll even deliver me a free tote full of yoga gear for use while I'm here. Kimpton hotels, you have a follower for life.

Tabata Saturday

I won't lie, I was a little bit hoping not to have to teach today. It's low 70s and not a cloud in the sky, and my class was at 10 am. No one was going to come. But as it turned out, 5 people were crazy enough to come anyway, so we did a pretty great ride that ended with one of the participants telling me "usually I have some reserves left at the end of class...not today."

So this awesome ride (which I'm sad to say I won't be able to ride again until next week since I'm not teaching Wednesday night...stupid day job) went like this:

5 minutes warm up
3 minutes 30s in saddle/30 s out
3 minutes 15 in 15 out
1 minute contemplate the Tabata
2 minutes TABATA
2 minutes recovery

3 minutes 30s in saddle/30 s out
3 minutes 15 in 15 out
1 minute contemplate the Tabata
3 minutes TABATA
2 minutes recovery

3 minutes 30s in saddle/30 s out
3 minutes 15 in 15 out
1 minute contemplate the Tabata
4 minutes TABATA
5 minutes cool down

In case you haven't heard of them, Tabata intervals go like this: 8 intervals of 20 seconds all-out intensity exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest. Sounds simple enough right? You can do them using any exercise you want, you just need to make sure you're out of breath by the end of each 20 seconds.

It's crazy hard. By the end of the last 4 minutes, we were all dying, but it was WONDERFUL.

I'm gonna go eat now.

Saturday Spin

Saturday morning was finally The Morning...my dad came to spin class, and as far as I'm told, he enjoyed it! Yay! I did a modified (read: longer) version of the princess ride, this time with a troll bridge (complete with riddles) and a patch of enchanted mud that got deeper every time that Duck Sauce song said "Barbara Streisand". Good times.

Tha's ma daddy. :-)

After that, we got brunch, then went to the local airport, where some WWII planes were there for poking around. Then we got lunch. Then we got ice cream. Then we had dinner. Lotta food on Saturday. :-)

The planes were very cramped inside.

Very cramped. That's my gorgeous momma. :-D

Anyway, I'm off to screw around until class time tonight. I don't think I'm going to double up on strength classes tonight...my knee's been bugging me and Deb's classes tend to be really jumpy so I'm going to lay off it and see if that doesn't help some.

Body Bar Workout

Tonight I'm going to play with the body bars a lot I think. And the balance balls. We'll do some of this:

And this:

And a little of this:

This:

Umm...not this: 

Because I can't balance on a ball like that. Not yet anyway.
This:

Is totally doable, as is this:

Source.

In that last position, we might also do chest presses. Might also add in some kind of sit up/crunch with a twist thing, with the bar behind our heads.

I really like the moves this guy has too:
That skier position may be making an appearance tonight. The mopping one too. That's beautiful. I'll have to see how many people there are and if we can snag some plates from the outside area.

This looks like a good move for the end of class maybe:


I love that this guy is clearly working out near a playground at recess, and somehow that's not creepy at all:


But I'm also thinking about throwing in a couple of tabatta segments tonight...anyone done these before? Maybe I'll have the skiers be dynamic (moving legs back and forth) and make that the cardio. And I'll be immune because someone has to time it, right? :-D

So yeah. That's tonight.