sooooooo, BodyPump...

This weekend, my gym is launching BodyPump classes. My pilates reformer instructor, Maria, also runs all the class offerings for the gym, and she's been talking to us about this since early spring. She and a number of trainers and instructors from the gym have all been working for months to get certified, and today was the first of the demo days. I decided I wanted to try it, mainly because I know I need to get some weight training into my regime, and I've heard such great things about it. I know a number of my blog readers take it and really love it.

If you don't know what BodyPump is, it's a choreographed class where every song for an hour focuses on a different body part through weight lifting exercise with a bar and a variety of options of weights you'll put on the end. In addition to the warm up, there are a song each for squats, lunges, shoulders, biceps, triceps, abs, and probably something else I'm forgetting.

So, I went, and one good thing is that they had all the staff there to help out with form and things as you go, so I feel like I got great attention to make sure that I was doing things correctly.

I can see how a program like this would totally work for weight training for anyone, me and women alike, and it gets your heart rate up quite a bit, as each song really goes through a full regimen of exercises for each body part.

By the 3rd or 4th song, I just wanted to cry. I'm serious. Many times, especially towards the end, I was choking back tears.

I don't know why. Yes, it was extremely hard for me. Yes, there were times I didn't think I'd make it through the whole song. But I think, for whatever reason, it was just an emotional response to working so hard and at times feeling proud of what i was accomplishing and at other times feeling like i was so overwhelmed and in over my head. I really couldn't pin point why I was emotional.

At the end of class, I straightened out my station and headed straight to the locker room. I needed to get out of the space.

After the locker room, I walked out and ran into a friend from my pilates class, who also took the class. We were chatting about it, and she said, "Hey - I saw your poster!" What? My "Success Story" poster was hung and I hadn't seen it? We walked over and she showed it to me. I couldn't believe it! It's just the front facing pictures from the blog you've all seen, with some information about how I got from "before" to "after", but even I was like, "Wow! I really have changed".

I have to say, seeing that poster after going through BodyPump and thinking I just wouldn't make it was enough motivation for me to go do it again. Though, next time, I'm dragging Robert with me.

Oh, and my hair's a compete mess, because I can't lift my arms to fix my ponytail. The world is just going to have to deal with my rat's nest today. :-) Tell me it will get better????

Thanks for reading!