And I like it.

Before the wedding, there was a spin class at our local Y that had morphed into a spin/boot camp class.  I never tried it, but heard good things about it.  The week of our wedding, the instructor changed it to spin/horizontal training.  I was intrigued, and it sounded really hard, so I figured it would not be smart to do this new class the day before I got in the car and drove 6 hours, lest I end up limping my way through the wedding week.

However, upon coming home, my boy and I decided we’d give it a try.

Holy crap.  That’s all I can say.

Some people call it extreme conditioning.  The premise is that you spin for 30 minutes, and then move to this horizontal training portion for 45.   Here, you do multi-faceted exercises that require your entire body to execute as opposed to muscle isolation.  So in English, one example would be you get in a plank and then do shoulder raises/rows or some other arm-lifting exercise.  Or else you get these little felt pieces and use them as ’sliders’ – so your feet can slide easily on the floor – one thing she has us do is do a push-up, and then you hover at the bottom, and slide your feet in and out (kind of like a jumping jack motion, but your feet just slide on the floor).  A lot of the exercises build from a plank of some sort, so there’s a lot of core, a lot of balance…and a lot of pain.  The last two classes I got to a point in both where I seriously thought I was going to throw up.  You do one routine all week, and then change it up the next week.  Apparently it gets harder and harder – the advanced people apparently do all of this stuff on a stability ball.  I think at this point if I tried that I’d break my head open.

I really like this class.  Is that sick?  Probably.  But I feel like I’m getting more of a complete workout than I’ve had in a looooooong time.  My body is re-discovering muscles that haven’t been used in a long time.  BioFreeze has been my friend.  I’m seeing muscles start to pop out again that I haven’t seen in years.

After I explained this to one friend, she asked why I didn’t just shove bamboo shoots under my fingernails. 

I think I’m going to try to get my professor who is a marathoner and fitness guru interested in this.  Maybe I’ll get bonus points on my dissertation if she likes it.

Then again, if she hates it, maybe I’ll lose points.  Hmmmm.