Kickboxing Aerobics

As this passion blog sadly draws to a close, I needed one last fitness class to attend. I've always wanted to take a kickboxing class, and the other remaining classes were HITT (High Intensity Tactical Training) which would've been pure torture.

The instructor began playing remixes of throwback songs, starting with "Since U Been Gone" by Kelly Clarkson, which by the way, was released in 2004. That's 9 whole years ago. Do you feel old yet? The instructor introduced herself, but I didn't catch her name because the microphone was extremely muffled and she wasn't the best at enunciating. She then followed up by telling us to get ready for 45 minutes of straight cardio, which was totally what I wanted to hear on a Wednesday night.

We started out with a 5 minute warmup of Power Remix/Zumba moves including step touches with variations on arm placement, grapevines, shuffle steps to both sides and squats. After this brief warmup, the instructor taught us the three basic kickboxing moves: the jab, hook, and uppercut. We kept our feet moving the whole time, continuing the step taps that we were doing before, but adding in the arm motions. She also taught us that we should always keep our arms in the defensive pose framing our face in between kickboxing moves to always keep our face protected. She encouraged us to imagine a person, exam, or project for to aim at as we punched. I was a bit taken aback by how intimidating the instructor and everyone in the class looked. I definitely would not want to be caught in a fight with any of the girls taking the class.

After doing a couple sets of jabs, hooks, and uppercuts while doing step touches, we started doing sets of squats, and then held a low squat as we jabbed, alternating arms. Then, we did two hooks, one with each arm and then jumped up, rotating 45 degrees, and returning to the squat position. We repeated this until we had faced each side of the room twice. Since we timed these squat turns to the music, it reminded me of school dances where everyone danced to the Cha Cha Slide or the Cupid Shuffle together. After we all returned to facing the mirror, we jumped and turned 45 degrees to the left and then squatted, and jumped back to face the mirror. Then we jumped and turned 45 degrees to the right and returned to the center. We repeated this move for a while, and it reminded me a lot of an intense game of Dance Dance Revolution.

Following the squat sets, we started a kicks set. The instructor slowed down a roundhouse kick, instructing us to keep our knee and legs parallel to the floor during throughout the kick. She also told us to look backwards in the direction of our kick in order to keep watch of our fictitious assaulter. After we repeated this kick on both sides, we added a step touch after kicking to stay light on our feet. Then, we repeated the shuffle steps we did during the warmup before we started our set of front kicks. Before doing front kicks we did high knees, raising each knee up and bringing our arms down to our sides as we did so. We then added in a front kick on each side. 

After these kick sets, we did two sets involving multiple kickboxing moves. We started the first one with high knees, with an added hop, for an eight count, and then we would squat and then jab to the right side four times. We would then start the high knees again, and jab to the left side. We repeated this set six times. Our other set included jabbing with one arm and then elbowing backwards with our other arm in a squat position. After repeating this move four times, we were told to "jack it out" and we did an eight count of jumping jacks, before we returned to our squat position and alternated the arms we jabbed and elbowed with. 

I would absolutely recommend this class to everyone, since the instructor also included tips on how to use these moves if you were caught in a situation that required you to defend yourself against an assaulter. Not to mention, it was definitely a great workout for your whole body, and an unique source of cardio.

Thanks so much for reading my blog and I hope that my reviews of fitness classes have motivated you guys to try a couple out! Until next semester!

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Step Up: Penn State Fitness Class Edition

After spending all of Halloween sleeping and eating candy, I went through my usual cycle of having a sudden burst of motivation and decided that it was time to drastically change my life and have a super productive Sunday. So, as my active roomie left to go to a step class on Sunday, I sadly put down my bag of popcorn and paused the Vampire Diaries episode I was watching, and followed her. Now, both my roomie and I are notorious for having problems with getting places on time, and this problem was only amplified by the fact that it was early on a Sunday. There were clothes flying across the room as we tried to get dressed and out the door on time. We got to the gym just before the ten minute deadline, when they stop letting people into the class.

The room was filled with about six or seven middle-aged women, and one older looking college student. They all made eye contact with us in the mirror as my roomie and I wandered around with a deer in headlights look on our faces, trying to locate where the steps were. The instructor decided to help us out by giving sideways glances towards a closet, where we easily found all the equipment we needed. What I didn't know was that the step had to be assembled, and we had to get the black and blue plank part separately from the purple square-ish steps. The plank piece proved to be a lot larger than I had anticipated, and being short and having limited arm muscle, I was struggling to refrain from accidentally dropping all the pieces on the floor and disrupting the class. By the time I had finally assembled my step, the class was already in full swing.

There was upbeat remix music playing in the background as the instructor went through moves choreographed to the music, similar to Zumba and Power Remix. In the class time that I had missed, she had already gone through three steps and defined them. The first was stepping up on to one corner of the step with your inner leg, and then bringing your outside leg to your butt. Then you step off with the leg of the knee you brought up, take another step on your other leg, and then step onto the other side of the step and repeat (shown from 5:24-5:30 in this video). The second was the same concept as the first, but instead of bringing your leg to your butt, you brought your knee toward the ceiling. And finally, the third step once again followed the form of the first two steps, but you kicked your leg back in an arabesque form when you stepped up on the step. The instructor had already given each step a term, and would quickly state the step coming up before she switched. However, since I had no idea which step was which, I ended up flailing my arms around and messing up the steps, having to just stop on the ground and wait until the next round of the move came around. I looked a bit like this:

I tried to just laugh it off, and looked over at my roomie who was struggling just as much as I was which made me feel better. All was well until I ended up making eye contact with the instructor who giggled a bit as she told the class "Keep up the good work guys, we'll all get the steps!"

After finally getting the first three steps down, of course this was the point when the instructor decided to add in more steps (V-step, Around the World, and Across the Top). By now, I had learned to embrace the fact that I looked a lot like a baby deer trying to stand for the first time, as I tried my best to keep up with the class.

All the stepping is actually an insane amount of cardio, and at the end of the cardio session, I was dripping in sweat, regretting all the candy that I had decided to eat over the weekend. As if all this cardio wasn't enough, We continued to pick up our weights. The instructor noted the fact that some of the students had decided to pick 5 and 10 pound weights, stating ominously that we might consider switching out our weights. We started out with harmless bicep and tricep curls, but we repeated these for a lot longer than I had in any other class. Then, she told us to extend our arms straight out so they were parallel with the floor, and raise our weights up into right angles and back down. By this time, everyone was regretting the weights they had grabbed, and the instructor encouraged us to switch out the weights to our needs, and even told us that dropping the weights completely would be fine. Being the weakling that I am, I immediately dropped my measly 3 pound weights completely and just did the rest of the exercises without any weights. We finished off the arm section with small arm circles. 

Finally, we finished off the class with a short ab section. We held side planks and normal planks with our hands positioned on the step, and also did a short series of mountain climbers. We then laid down on the step and did leg raises and toe touches. By this time, the class was over, and we finished out the class with the typical stretch cool down. 

This class proved to be a lot tougher than I had expected. It's a great way to get cardio, and still workout your abs and arms a bit. So if you're looking for a change in pace with your normal workouts be sure to give this class a try! Just don't do it right after Halloween, because I guarantee you'll immediately regret your decision.  

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Full Body Sweatout

As we come to the end of our passion blogs, I've realized how difficult it is to find fitness classes that fit into my schedule. So sadly, I had to sacrifice my one time tradition of going to yoga on Mondays in order to go to the Full Body Workout class. The fitness schedule noted that this class was taught by junior instructors which made me nervous after my not so great experience at Barre Fitness.

As I walked in the gym I immediately noticed the upbeat remixes of pop music and bright lighting that was completely different from the yoga and pilates classes I went to the previous weeks. I quickly put my stuff down, and grabbed an ab workout mat and weights, which everyone else had already gotten.

A large majority of the class was cardio. The instructor led us in doing a bunch of Zumba moves including side toe touches, grapevine, shuffles, around the world, and square steps. After going to multiple Power Remix steps and doing the square steps with a set arm motion, I was taken aback when the instructor decided to switch it up. She told us to move our arms up from our sides, drawing a half circle with each arm as we stepped forward, and then move our arms straight up as we stepped back. For some reason, my brain just couldn't handle this change and my arms ended flapping around a bit like this

We continued with these steps for multiple songs. Then we did other cardio exercises including high knees, jumping jacks, burpees, and frog jumps. We started out doing each exercise for two minutes, and then a minute, and finally repeated them for about half a minute. By this time, I was dripping sweat, which is rare since I don't usually sweat a lot. But bear in mind, my overwhelming amount of sweat may be because of the fact that I have contracted the Plague for the second time.

After the cardio section, the instructor teaching stepped down as a second instructor strapped on her microphone and moved to the front and center. The second instructor focused more on muscle toning. She told us to quickly go pick up our weights and me being the oh so strong girl that I am picked up my measly 5 pound weights, as everyone else grabbed their 7-10 pound weights. The instructor led us in the generic bicep and tricep curls. Afterwards, we did a set of squats with the weights, and then lifted the weights above our heads for a set. By this time, my palms were sweating profusely, and I thought there was a high possibility that I'd accidentally drop my weights. After those sets, we dropped down and held a plank and then stood up and did some plie squats. After the plie squats we held another plank. We finished off muscle conditioning with a set of ab exercises including leg lowers, toe touches, and half supermans.

After that muscle conditioning, the class was almost over and we did the generic stretching cool down routine. I was pleasantly surprised by the junior instructors that taught this class. They were both very professional, and gave motivational comments at just the right times. Although the class included a lot of generic moves, it definitely worked out my whole body.

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YOGAnna Love It!

Okay, okay, I'll admit it, that title was a bit of a stretch. Hah, hah, get it?

Do I get an award for using two puns? I'll accept cookies and ice cream.

But I digress, after hearing my mom rave about how good yoga is for you all weekend (I hope you all had a great time with your families!), I decided I might as well add a second edition to my basic white girl fitness class streak. So, following my pretty rough Monday, I made my way over to the White building to go to the Fitness Yoga class at 8.

As I walked toward Room 6, I immediately noticed the dim lighting and the classical piano music playing in the background. There were already a couple of students stretching on their yoga mats. It looked like a scene straight out of a magazine. The instructor introduced herself as Rachel, and briefly explained the difference between the three yoga classes offered at PSU. Hatha Yoga is the least rigorous, and focuses on breathing while Vinyasa Yoga is more rigorous, and Fitness Yoga is a hybrid between the two. After this explanation she started the class.

We began sitting criss-cross apple sauce on our mats, and taking deep breaths, moving our arms up toward the ceiling as we inhaled and bringing them back down to the ground as we exhaled. We repeated this three times. Then we were instructed to reach forward as we still sat criss-cross apple sauce and press our chest and foreheads towards the mat, stretching out our inner thighs. Afterwards, Rachel instructed us to begin to hold a plank. After holding the plank for a little, she told us to begin shifting our weight forwards over our shoulders, and then back into our heels, working our abs even harder. Then Rachel told us to "hover" our bodies down so that our chest was only a little bit off the ground in a push up position and then enter the upward facing dog pose. I'm gonna be honest, with barely enough upper body strength to scoop an acceptable amount of ice cream in the dining halls, "hovering" down gracefully was physically impossible. I'd call what I did more of "plopping" down. After holding upward facing dog, we followed Katie as she raised her body and entered downward facing dog. Then we extended our arms out to the side and raised our bodies so that our chest was parallel to the floor. Rachel then told everyone to bend their knees and raise our arms as we inhaled and entered the chair pose. From the chair pose we kept our arms toward the sky and stepped our right leg back into a lunge, and then brought it back to the chair pose, and stepped our left leg back into the lunge. When we had lunged with both legs, we returned to the chair pose. We then returned to the plank position and repeated the sequence completely a couple more times.

After holding a plank and finishing our final run through the sequence, Rachel told us to drop our knees and then hold the child's pose, giving our bodies a break. She gave us a reminder that we had the option to return to this pose at any point throughout the class, if we felt the need to take a break. For the rest of class we went through a bunch of typical yoga poses including tree, the upward bow, boat, thread the needle, sumo wrestler, happy baby, etc.

My favorite part of the class would have to be when Rachel slowly led us up the the climax of the class, the crow pose. I'm sure you guys have all seen this yoga pose before, and let me tell you, it's just about a thousand times harder than it looks. After realizing I couldn't even lift one foot off the ground without almost falling over and dying, I gracefully gave up. However,the veterans of the class who have been slowly building up their experience went for it and the thuds that followed sounded a lot like a chorus of polar bears falling off their yoga balls.

We then continued with a couple stretches (rotation pose, twists, and knee press). Afterwards, we stayed in the corpse pose with our eyes closed, which was basically just a nice relaxing nap. We finished off our class with the inhale and exhale breaths we took at the beginning of class.

I can't put into words how much I loved this class. Rachel had the perfect soothing and soft voice for the class. She talked a lot about absorbing others' positivity and releasing negativity, and other hardcore yoga spirit things. I'm not sure how much of that I believe, but I do know that by the end of the class, I had completely forgotten about my terrible Monday. My whole body felt relaxed and I felt like I could go straight to bed and sleep like a log. I'll definitely be fitting this class into my schedule every Monday night, and you guys should too!

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There's No Clever Pun for Pilates

I channeled my inner basic white girl this week and narrowed down my fitness class choices to either pilates or yoga. Pilates fit perfectly into my schedule so I did my weekly routine of dragging myself out of the comfort of my bed to the White gym. I owe my motivation to go to the gym to this passion blog. Thanks blog, you're always here for me.

Sadly, no one could come to this gym class with me so I was all by myself.

I waited in a line of other girls as we waited for the gym doors to be opened. When they were, the instructor greeted each of us with a smile as we filed in. We made our way to the cubbies and the instructor who introduced herself as Katie told us that this was a barefoot class and instructed us to take off our socks and shoes. She then told us to grab a yoga mat and a couple of the mats used for ab exercises if we felt that we would need them. I felt super official as I sat on my yoga mat and was prepared for the class. The atmosphere was really relaxing with dimmed lights and upbeat yet relaxing music playing in the background.

Katie started the class by having us all sit criss cross apple sauce (throwback to elementary school) and corrected our postures, emphasizing the importance of a straight spine. After taking a couple deep breaths, Katie had us interlock our fingers and and straighten our arms forwards with our palms facing forward. We then raised our arms and palms toward the ceiling and then leaned towards the left, and then the right, stretching our obliques. Then, we started out our exercises with a plank set. We held a front plank for a while, and then rolled over to the right and held the right side plank. Afterwards we returned to a center plank, and then held a left side plank. My shaky arms every time I do planks give away the fact that my arms are as strong as spaghetti. After holding the center plank for a little, Katie told us to lower our knees to the floor, do a push up, then roll onto our heels into the downward dog pose. Then we slowly stood up, and then returned to a plank and repeated that set of exercises. After we did multiple sets of the exercise, we got on our hands and knees on the mat and did table top exercises, which were also used in Washboard Abs and Butts and Guts. We started out by raising our legs up towards the ceiling to about hip level and then lowered them without our toes touching the floor. Then we drew a triangle with our toes, tapping them on one side of the mat, raising them towards the ceiling, and then tapping them on the other side of the mat. We finished off our table top exercises by bending our knees and flexing our feet so the bottoms of our feet were facing the ceiling. Then we began kicking our legs up.

After those sets of exercises, Katie told us to shift our weight and stretch our backs and hips by going into child's pose, and shifting our weight from left and right. We continued on to do the typical set of leg raises. Then we kept our legs in a right angle with our bodies and raised our shoulder blades off the mat with our arms moving up and down by our sides. Next, we did leg circles first with one leg and then with both. Afterwards, we stretched out our abs by extending our bodies out fully while laying down. Then, we started doing half supermans, raising only our legs, and then raising only our upper  bodies. We held one of the half supermans working on our upper half, and then did what Katie called airplanes. With our upper bodies raised, we twisted our body and tapped our fingers to the ground. We finished our workout with another plank set. This time when we did our side planks, we dropped our hips to the ground and did side lying leg lifts. Afterwards we stretched ourselves out with another child's pose. Finally, we sat criss cross apple sauce once again and did the side stretches to end the class.

This class was definitely one of my favorites. All the exercises flowed into one another, and the atmosphere was extremely relaxing. Not to mention, there was constant stretching, giving your muscles a break and ensuring that you don't strain anything. The music choice and lighting also keeps you very relaxed, but the workout still worked our abs, glutes, and legs very thoroughly. Katie was also a great instructor, making constant rounds and helping everyone out. Definitely check out pilates if you have a chance! Because if this blog post didn't convince you, this Gif definitely will.

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Butts and Guts: Zombie Apocalypse or Fitness Class?

As a college student, I think it's safe to say that weekends are reserved for sleeping. Lots and lots of sleeping. But for some unknown reason I decided that going to the earliest gym class on Sunday would be a good idea. So reluctantly, after grabbing brunch, my food baby and I made our way over to the White building. After yawning a couple times and feeling a lot like this,

I met up with my roomie, and we walked into the gym class right on time. The instructor, Arielle, had already started the class with a group of 6 girls. This made me super confused and gave me flashbacks to when I accidentally walked into the wrong classroom, interrupting an engineering class. Can you say awkward? Trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, I tapped into my inner ninja and quickly grabbed a mat and joined the second line of girls. I ended up behind a girl who had curlers in her hair. Props to you girl with curlers for finding a great way to multitask! 

Anyways, back to the actual class, even though I had arrived on time, the class was already in full swing. This means that Arielle hadn't led the class in any stretching before starting with exercises. A lot of the exercises were exercises that we did in Washboard Abs (click on the link to read my previous post). We did the superman halves, leg lowers, bicycles, and hip raises. Some ab exercises that weren't used in Washboard Abs were heel touches and scissor kicks that gradually moved up until our toes pointed towards the ceiling and then back down towards the floor. 

Since this class is titled Butts and Guts, obviously we also did lots of butt exercises. We did a long sequence of what the instructor called "table top exercises". For these exercises we were on our hands and knees. Our sequence started with us lifting our legs towards the ceiling and then lowering them towards the floor without touching it. Then we started moving our leg from side to side in a U shape, and we finished off the sequence with the good ol fire hydrant exercise. We completed this sequence for one leg and then switched to the other. After these table top exercises, we started a long sequence of squats. We alternated between normal squats, narrow squats (where your feet are together), curtsy squats (I felt like a princess doing these), and squats where we started all the way down and came up halfway. We finished off the class with plies with our legs shoulder width apart and some lunges. Afterwards, Arielle led us in what I have noticed to be the generic warm down stretch. 

Arielle was a very attentive instructor, constantly looking at everyone's form and giving polite constructions where necessary. However, probably because it was a pretty early Sunday class, she seemed to lack the passion that the instructors I've really liked had. Also, because we didn't stretch at the beginning of class, my hip cramped a lot throughout the class causing me to take a lot more breaks than I would've liked to. Either way, the workout she gave us was very thorough, and definitely worked out my core, legs and butt. Walking up the stairs to my dorm was a struggle and when I finally made it back to my room, I collapsed on my bed. When I tried to get up to take a shower I looked a lot like this: 

In conclusion, Butts and Guts is pretty similar to Washboard Abs, but has lots of butt exercises included. If you're looking for a class that works out your legs and butt, this is definitely it! 

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Washboard ABSolutely Terrifying

Due to popular demand, and all the cookies I've been eating from West, I decided it was time to go to Washboard Abs. I slid into Madi Weiser's DM (click on her name and go check out her amazing blog!) to see if she was free too. After getting a little bit lost in the White building (I admit it, I still don't know where anything is), and admiring the gymnasts practicing, we arrived outside the big gym-- my torture chamber for the next 20 minutes. 

We went through the typical swipe this, sign that routine, and went to put our stuff down in the bleachers. After noticing that everyone else was going to the closet to grab a mat, we joined in and tried to look like we were seasoned pros. We followed the pack of girls holding mats back onto the gym floor and like a lot of the other girls, immediately avoided the front and center position, looking for a spot that was comfortably in the middle. Let's be honest, who wants people watching them struggle through an ab workout? Definitely not me. 

The instructor realized that no one wanted to be near the front, and asked that everyone move up a couple feet, promising us that she wouldn't bite. It was almost like there was a collective sigh as everyone, without standing up, reluctantly dragged themselves and their mat forward. We looked like an army of dogs dragging their butts on the floor. Before we started our class, the instructor asked if any of us were staying for Power Remix and gave a shoutout to my boy Marvin. She then asked if any of us had any areas we wanted to focus on, or any exercises we wanted to do. After an awkward silence, she turned on her music and led us in some side stretching. 

Then the fun began. We started out with some planks, my least favorite exercise. We held a 30 second center plank, and then moved on to doing a side plank. After almost falling over trying to get into position for my side plank, I finally got into the right position, but my arm began to shake vigorously which set an ominous tone for the rest of class. We then returned back to center and did another plank, and then did a side plank to the other side, and finished it all off with one final center plank. Throughout this set of planks, the instructor gave us multiple options on variations that made the plank either harder or easier. She demonstrated an option which let you drop your knees, making the exercise easier if the plank was too difficult. She also showed us an exercise that involved lifting your knees to your chest while you're still in the plank position, creating more of a challenge. After the planks we curled ourselves up to the side and did crunches that focused on our obliques for both sides. Then came the super interesting exercise. We started what was kind of like a half Superman except instead of doing the full Superman exercise, we just lifted up our chests and arms separately. I thought we looked a bit like seals, and Madi thought that we looked like dead fish flopping around. Either way, we looked ridiculous. We continued on to do some bicycles. Once again our instructor showed us multiple variations to make the exercise easier or harder, depending on how comfortable you were with the current exercise. We did some other generic exercises, including one where we sat up and then slowly lowered our body without touching the floor and then sat back up, another where we laid on our backs and lifted our hips up, some toe touch crunches, and last but not least side crunches. This set of exercises took us to the end of class, and we finished off the class with some stretching as usual. 

Although I didn't catch her name, the instructor I had was very good. She made her rounds around the gym to try and correct any mistakes with form she saw. She also made sure to provide variations for each exercise we did to cater to every student she had, regardless of their skill level. Not to mention, she had a great playlist of remixes with a steady beat that was easy to do the exercises to. Finally, she encouraged us to come back with suggestions on areas to work on and exercises she wanted to try out. When I left the class, I didn't feel any soreness in my ab area, but I definitely could feel the burn the morning after. Let me just tell you, having sore abs while having a nasty cough is not a fun combination. 

All in all, Washboard Abs is a quick class that definitely works out your abs and also exercises your glutes and legs too! The class is in a large gym which makes it less intimidating. Plus, you're with a decently sized group of other people at different skill levels, and no one can tell if you take a break. 

However, I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't get washboard abs instantaneously! I was expecting a transformation a bit like this:

When in reality my "ab muscles" look like this: 

Until next week! And if any of you guys want to go to a class with me feel free to let me know!