So for the month of April the initial challenge I set out to do fell through due to lack of planning on my part and has been moved into May – and this time will hopefully actually get done (it may have been more about me chickening out and less about me not planning it).
Instead, I decided to take up one of the more unique and interesting challenges that was suggested to me, and my friend Kim and I joined the circus. As I’m sure most can deduce, no we did not quit our jobs and become contortionists in a travelling road show – but we started doing a Jukari class at King West Fitness which is based on concepts from Cirque Du Soleil. What I imagined would be me gracefully prancing about, doing flips, tricks and flying through the air was of course exactly how it happened. Except that lifting your own body weight is A LOT harder than one would assume, especially on a bar suspended in the air.
This class was certainly, and slightly disappointingly, much more of a fitness class than a circus class. However, it wasn’t enough of a fitness class to really be a challenging workout – so it fell somewhere in the middle. That being said, I definitely utilized and engaged upper body muscles that I very rarely use – and I would assume that would be the same for most women and the next day my muscles were aching.
The class consisted mainly of learning how to hold the bar and your body in the easiest way to lift yourself off the ground. However, for women little back or arm muscle – getting any leverage was VERY difficult. My initial assumption would be that a lot of the lifts would be more like a jump so that the strength could come from your legs, but that was not the case at all.
We signed up for 5 classes and have only done two so far...so I’m very excited to see if it will progress and perhaps we will advance a little more in the tricks we are doing on the bars – and then maybe I’ll get the circus experience I was hoping for!Since this post is the first about fitness I should warn anyone reading that I LOVE all things about working out, fitness, health and wellness and with that I am really into trying all the newest and trendiest workout techniques. I’ve done P90X, Insanity, and Chalean Extreme; I love Beachbody workouts and I avidly follow their new programs. They recently released a new workout program called The Asylum which I have just ordered and plan to start in the next couple of months...so watch out for that if you want to follow my results.
