BODYPUMP!

This morning, I got pumped...



...For BODYPUMP!
I'm a dork, I know this. Am I in love? Totally. Am I already sore and busted less than 2 hours later? Sigh. Unbelievably so. Tomorrow is gonna suck, haha. My arms and shoulders seem to be suffering the most, but I can also feel it in my back, calves and butt as well. Mission accomplished!

So, it's 60 minutes long and the basic breakdown goes like this:

• Warm-up
• Legs/Squats
• Chest
• Back/Gluteals/Hamstrings
• Triceps and Biceps
• Legs/Lunges
• Shoulders/Arms
• Abs
• Cooldown/stretch

Each track is about 5 minutes long and you take regular breaks in between to stretch and change out your weights. My favorites were the squat, back/gluteal/hamstring and bicep tracks. The back track is where we got to do deadlifts, rows and a clean & press. I kinda knew what a clean & press was via Jari Love DVDs, but it's a bit different with a barbell and it took me several tries before I could get the hang of it. Once I did though, it was a pretty fun move.

Triceps weren't my favorite, but they never are because my elbows always flare like a mo' fo'. In fact, there were a bunch of personal trainers walking around to check everyone's form and of course, dude came up to me and told me to bring my elbows in. I said, "Yeah, I know; my elbows flare like crazy." He agreed and said that was one of the hardest muscles to train.

Hands-down toughest track? Lunges. Holy burnout, Batman. I wanted to push hard and not stop (especially since a body-builder chick came by and started praising me on my form), but I had to flat out stop and just stand up straight a few times. I couldn't tell if it was the extra weight from the barbell, the high number of reps or the half-lunge pulsing moves that did me in... I'm gonna guess it was all of the above. The backs of my legs, my quads and butt cheeks were on fire.

The abs track wasn't too bad since it was mostly various crunches, but there was some plank work that I ended up doing on my knees a few times.

I of course was sweating like crazy, but felt pretty bad-ass when it was over. I officially need to start improving my upper body strength and my core. Those were the areas I struggled the most.

So that was BodyPump. The only downside? It's not (as of yet) going to be offered on the weekends. I guess this was just a "preview" session. So, so bummed. And according to the schedule, they're not bringing it back until after July 5th and the only night I'll be able to go is Thursdays at 6:30pm, after the 5:30pm Zumba class I usually go to. BUH! I'm definitely not doing both back-to-back and I loathe the idea of waiting that late in the evening to workout, but that may be my only option if I want to stick with it. I'm sure they'll add more classes later, but in the meantime, it's going to be pretty limited. Oh well. I'm just glad I finally got to experience it and see what all the hype was about. I'm officially a fan!

If you have a chance to check out a class near you, please do! It's pretty much the ultimate strength workout and I can't wait until I start seeing the results. Might just have to look into investing in a small barbell so I can get my fix at home, in between classes, heh.