Posts tagged ‘bootcamp’
Haul-Bys
Hello, haulers! Here are a few quick hits to finish up the day.
The United States armed forces has a weight problem: More than a quarter of 17- to 24-year-olds are too overweight for military services, and the problem is bigger among women than men. CBS This Morning considered the problem in this segment earlier today.
A “fitness marketing expert” says there are five basic reasons that most gyms suck, and one is that there’s very little connection or community among members. I know that, for me, a squeaky-clean facility wins out over every other factor, all the time. Who cares if there’s camaraderie if we’re all working out on floors that haven’t been mopped in a week? Anyway, check out the list and see whether you agree.
If you ever wind up in a jail with a yoga program, take advantage of it. This pothead in Colorado did, and the judge was so pleased that she went easy on him even though prosecutors wanted him to spend more time in jail. Insert your own high-on-life joke here.
The Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ Evan Longoria thinks yoga is cool and helpful. Think I can translate that into getting Mr. Haul Buns, a baseball fan and yogaphobe, to come to the studio with me this summer? Yeah, probably not.
So, that was my Saturday . . .
I accidentally signed up for two fitness events on the same day planned a huge day of fitness fun this past Saturday, starting with New York Road Runners’ Fitness Body, Mind, Spirit Games in Central Park. As Steph and I were walking along Central Park West to the race, a couple in an old-school sedan pulled up alongside us and asked for directions to 67th and Madison. I crouched down next to the car and told them how they were going to cross Central Park at the 72nd Street transverse. They asked if there were any bridges to go under. Only then did I realize what they were towing behind them.
As it turns out, I was giving directions to Harry and Barbara, two members of the Waterloo German Band, who had driven their car and freaking awesome float all the way from Illinois to Manhattan for this year’s German-American Steuben Parade. (Check them out in action; pretty impressive.) Once I routed the couple around the park — and away from any low-hanging overpasses — they thanked me. As then as we were walking away, they honked, beckoned me back, and very sweetly asked me to mail some postcards for them. Why the heck not? They had literally hauled a larger-than-life cuckoo clock replica behind them across six states; it was the least I could do.
Much later in the day, Steph and I were lamenting the fact that we hadn’t taken a picture of the float before the clock rolled away. As we were telling Mr. Haul Buns (or, The Artist Formerly Known as The Fiancé Formerly Known as The Boyfriend—whichever you prefer, because I’m fairly certain he doesn’t prefer either) about our day, I pulled out the postcards to show him and bam! They were Waterloo German Band postcards! Harry and Barbara, you guys rock — mostly because your cards proved to the skeptical Mr. HB that the float actually WAS festooned with a stuffed deer head.
Anyway, after our Good Samaritan stint, Steph and I ran the Fitness 4-miler. The Biggest Loser‘s Bob Harper was there on behalf of Quaker, and TBL‘s season 11 winner Olivia Ward and her sister and teammate, Hannah Curlee, were on hand to cheer for all of the runners. Steph got thisclose to meeting Bob, but his press person scuttled him away from fans just before the start of the race. This photo is all we have to remember our almost-encounter with The Blonde One.
Maybe he ran away from us because I was yelling, "Believe in yourself, trust the process, change forever!"
Happy with our times, and with me gingerly nursing the knee I’d scraped when I took a header getting into the start corral — sigh — Steph and I took the 2 train down to South Street Seaport for Women’s Health magazine’s Are You Game?
This pretty awesome day of (relatively) free group fitness classes and swag giveaways was so much fun. TBL‘s season 11 trainer Cara Castronuova was there to teach a boxing class; during a Q&A, she told us all that women should be able to throw a nice, clean punch. Seems like good advice.
(Photo: Stephanie Pinsdorf)
Though we got shut out of a few classes because we hadn’t reserved spots (a definite must for next year), we took part in two really great sessions: Rock Yoga, a vinyasa class set to songs like Guns N’ Roses’ “Patience” and Aerosmith’s “Dream On” — it shouldn’t have worked, but it totally did — and La Blast, a cardio ballroom class developed by Dancing with the Stars’ pro Louis Van Amstel. Amstel was even there to teach the class; from the moment he told us to shake our boobs and think with our pelvic regions, I knew I’d have a pretty great time. Afterward, Steph and I weren’t about to let this blonde, male reality TV personality get away without taking a photo with us.
Harper, this coulda been you.
Does your hairdo stop you?
Today’s Chicago Tribune features an editorial on women’s attention to their hair may be getting in the way of them getting a good workout. Any dudes reading this are all, “Does… not… compute.” But I’m sure plenty of you faithful female Haulers have had at least one instance in which you had to decide whether exercising was worth the time and effort necessary to clean up your sweaty self afterwards. I know this can be an issue for women of color; it’s a regular topic of conversation among the awesome chicks at Black Girls Run. Even U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin has something to say about the fact that women who’ve recently gotten their hair done may skip a workout or two in order to maintain the look a little bit longer.
“Oftentimes you get women saying, ‘I can’t exercise today because I don’t want to sweat my hair back or get my hair wet,'” she said in a recent story in The New York Times. “I hate to use the word ‘excuse,’ but that’s one of them.”
I can understand why you wouldn’t want to mess up hair you just paid someone a whole lot of money to make pretty — it’s the main reason I haven’t cut my hair shorter than shoulder length in three years. If I can’t pull it back into a ponytail, it means I have to dry and do it — which won’t work. Mainly, that’s because I am a A) lazy and B) a slob. Though I always shower after my lunchtime workouts, sometimes there’s just not enough time to shampoo, condition, dry and style my mop. Today, in fact, I happen to be rocking the “I-came-straight-to-work-from-bootcamp” hair, the linchpin of which is a well-placed hairband. (The braid doesn’t hurt, either.)
You'd never know, right?
Yes, guys, I’m gross. But I smell lovely (I promise!), cutting back on twice-a-day washings has made my hair much healthier, and — most importantly — today’s workout is DONE. Join the revolution! Sweaty heads unite!
Does this mean every instructor is going to start screaming at me?
The American College of Sports Medicine recently released its annual forecast of workout trends: Boot camps are big, Pilates is passé. Read more here.
In the piece, a Pilates studio owner says that money is a huge factor.
“Pilates is perceived as more expensive than bootcamp,” Lara Hudson, owner of the Mercury Fitness Pilates studio in San Francisco, California, told Reuters. “In this tough economy people look for less expensive workouts.”
Do you think she’s right? How much does cost affect your workout routine?
Haul Buns 