Hot Athletica

I have been on the fence for the past couple of weeks of whether or not I want to buy a membership for Dynamic Fitness. Every day my interests and longing to practice yoga, whether it be hot yoga or just yoga in my living room, is growing stronger and stronger and I know that if I had a membership that I would be hauling my butt to every yoga class that I could. There are also other classes available at the gym such as cardio spin, Zumba fitness, pilates and reformer. My big dilemma with the whole thing is that I seem to have gotten stuck with all of the lunch shifts during the weekdays at work, which interferes a lot with the classes I want to attend (mostly the hot yoga). So I decided that I would drop into a few of the other classes that they offer and see if I enjoy them enough to use as back-up in case on some days I was to be unable to get to other classes that I really want.

There is a new class that they created called Hot Athletica which is a 45 minute mix of high-intensity cardio intervals, strength training, core work and power yoga in the hot yoga studio (which is 95-100 degrees). Just imagine doing fast-paced yoga, push-ups, burpees, running in place, lunges, squats, jumping, planks...etc in a hot hot room. A lot of members that I have spoken to haven't even tried it yet because they are scared of how hard it is. I thought I would give it a shot today. I'm not gonna lie - I was nervous. The room was a lot warmer than I would have expected it to be and there were only 6 of us brave enough to show up. Within 10 minutes I was dripping with sweat and breathing a lot harder than I would have liked or even like to admit to. I'm in decent shape but I suck when it comes to things like burpees (with push-ups in between to make it that much more fun). I start off strong but lose steam quickly because I lack the upper body strength to do proper push-ups, then I fall behind in the reps and feel guilty and weak. However, on the flip side of that, there were times when I was rocking the moves he was telling us to do which boosted my confidence when I saw others struggling as I did with other moves.

So my personal review of the Hot Athletica class is as follows. Am I glad I attended? Most definitely. Sweating my arse off and surviving the 45 minutes felt good. I am also glad that I tried something new rather than attending a yoga class that I know I would get through no problem. It was also a really nice change from my regular work-outs. One of my greatest fitness faults is that I tend to not push myself hard enough sometimes and get caught in a cycle of doing the same exercises and same routines all of the time, which is not ideal.

A peacock on a fence? How could I
not add this in my indecisive post?

Now the question is, did this class help tip me over the fence towards buying a membership to Dynamic? Maybe. I am still torn because I feel that this was a class that I could do at home in my living-room, apart from the heated room of course. It didn't teach me anything new or make me understand anything differently. What I love about taking yoga classes is that even though I may do the same sequence or pose the following day or day after that, I am constantly learning how to improve the pose to make it work and achieve what it is supposed to do. But then again, apart from doing a P90X video every now and then, I generally do not do work-outs like the Athletica at home so it did inspire me to exercise in a way that I haven't been doing regularly. The main reason I would ever want a Dynamic membership is to frequent as many yoga classes as I could, but I think that if I had a membership and couldn't attend a yoga class then this is a class that I would show up for to mix it up a bit and challenge myself in different ways.

My next class I plan to attend a spin class which is another class I have never done. I don't know why they intimidate me so much, but if I want to be serious about this membership then I have to approach this expensive decision at every angle. My one worry is being hunched over the bike for so long considering I have a less than stellar healthy back/neck record. But I survived the class today so hopefully a spin class would have the same outcome.

Although I did stumble across a couple stories of people dying during a spin class. Like this guy in New Zealand and also this guy in Ottawa.

Wish me luck!