Dance de Podium

What, I haven’t posted about my gym activities in over 4 weeks? Will have to remedy that.

For my newer blogfriends (and thanks for coming by, seems my tireless NaBloHoing is working… keep them comments coming!), let me explain. I have a slight cardiac-arrest- waiting-to-happen obsession called “Body Jam”. And, at the advice of my mature (cough) niece Jolene, I will henceforth refrain from using the acronym BJ for it. Because apparently it can also stand for something else. Involving a different kind of dance. Oh, to be in my 20’s again when I would think that way.

So, Body Jam is a hip-hop dance aerobic class that I take at the gym twice or sometimes three times a week. I credit it for instilling in me an appreciation of music from the likes of Justin Timberlake, Timbaland, Rihanna, Beyonce, even Fallout Boy etc…which frankly I never really had before. I also have a favourite instructor by the name of T.J., who I follow around from gym to gym. He is an awesome dancer, super nice guy, who tolerates my hootin’ and a hollerin’ during the class. Yes, he’s even said he really “appreciates my enthusiasm” as it makes the class rock. I love you Teej.

The latest routine (or release, as they call them), has some Latin rhythms (J.Lo), some rock dance (I don’t know how else to describe it, robotic Thriller-like moves) and this one part that they call “Dance de Podium”. You’re supposed to imagine that you’re dancing on a podium, for 100 of your closest rave friends. Or for me, the closest I want to get to pole-dancing as a form of exercise (although there is a studio not far away that has opened up pole-dancing class). But there’s this killer cardiac aerobic section, where you bounce two-footed shifting your weight from one leg to the other, like a boxer or if you’re on a trampoline; and then when you’re comfortable with that, you can take it to the next level and jump in that pattern. And finally, Level 2, where you stick your heel to the ground of each leg that you lift as you bounce to the other side. Hard to explain, this is what it looks like...



With Ian being away this past week, I missed my Tuesday night party with Teej and all my regular Body Jam peeps. So I made up for it by attending a Tuesday morning class led by another instructor, Pat, at the Women's only club. Well Pat, she's a SAHM, who studied ballet and dance at University, but decided to stay home after she had her kids, who are now 4 and 2. So she teaches these few classes during the week, Body Jam and the yoga/pilates class as well.

Well, as most SAHMs, she succumbed to her kids' sickness last week, and wasn't quite fully recovered for this class. And when we got to this section, she told us that she would not be able to show the Level 2 part because of her cold. But she says to ME, into the mike, "Can you do Level 2?" To which I nodded and she gestured to me to come on up and demonstrate it. Well, I was really caught up in the moment, jumped up on the podium/stage with her, and kept the Level 2 going while she showed the Level 1 option. Can you say, "Karen does Courteney Cox in Bruce Springsteen's Video Dancing in the Dark?" with a straight face? Not a stadium full of screaming fans, but I was on a podium, in front of 20 strange women (not my usual class), praying that I could keep up the crazy hopping and not pee in my pants.

When I first took this class and found that I have an affinity for it, I fleetingly thought about perhaps trying to teach it. I'm a weirdo, in that I have zero endurance for all things aerobically challenging such as hiking, biking, climbing... I'm a huffer puffer. But for step and dance aerobics, I could probably go on for hours on end. It's got to be psychological. But Ian confirms, I'm just a weirdo. So I could probably pull it off. If I weren't so self-conscious and perhaps if I had started maybe 10 years ago.

But actually being up there, even for the mere seconds, made me really happy to get down. It would be much too difficult to have to learn the mirror image choreography and shout out the moves singingly. I think I'll just stick to the partipant part, rather than lead the party.

But I did manage to keep my pants dry. Did my daughter proud. After all:

“Superheroes pee in the toilet, not in their big girl underwear”
-SuperG, Friday Nov 9, before bed.