Technique I is the class I needed. Sure, it means I have to make a mad dash to get there once I finish teaching — I get out of teaching at 6:45 p.m. and Technique I starts at 7:30 p.m. fifteen miles away through Atlanta evening traffic. Luckily, unless there’s a disastrous accident blocking the Top-End Perimeter, I can just make it, do a quick clothing-change, and be ready to SWEAT.

You wouldn’t think that just pulling in and releasing specific abdominal muscles for 45 minutes would be much of a workout. Ha! First, you have to FIND the specific abdominal muscles you’re trying to isolate. Unfortunately, most of my excess weight is in my abdomen, and those muscles are trying to stay hidden behind it so they won’t have to work. At least Sabeeya has some tricks up her sleeve to help you find them.

Then you have to tighten specific ones, and only those ones. I can suck in the lowest ab muscles by themselves, but when I try to suck in the pair right underneath “the girls,” everything else in the region wants to suck in also. You’re supposed to do this, though, without clenching up EVERYTHING, especially without clenching up your butt like you have been constipated for a week.

The whole name of the game is isolation — move what you want to move and don’t move anything else (though it can come along for the ride). If you can’t do that you can’t layer moves atop moves, you can’t move your top half one way and your bottom half another way. After fifty years of slacking, those muscles of mine are having to learn a whole new way of working, and they aren’t that happy about it. But damnit, I’m going to dance at least sort of passably so they better GET happy about it.

Taking Technique I is a post from: Art of the Firebird. Some Rights Reserved. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

We were both relieved that first morning to find that she was not the largest, nor was I the oldest, woman there. So we went back the next week. And the next. By then I had found that this was actually do-able, damn good exercise plus a whole lot of fun!

When the next six-week class session came around, I decided what the hell, let’s try a choreography class as well and learn an actual dance — an actual BELLYDANCE. Yep. BELLYDANCE. Traditional Raqs Sharki, Middle Eastern folkdance, is done by women of all ages, shapes, and sizes as part of their own culture, and Nazeem Allayl Studio encourages that in their program, so why not?

So I took one choreography class, then another, then another. Last week I started a fourth choreography combinations class on Turkish style; tomorrow my basic technique drill class starts so I can learn to do the moves precisely and properly.

I started doing bellydance for exercise, but as I told Schadia after class last week, “I want to dance, not just sweat.” For me, most forms of exercise are B-O-R-I-N-G and tedious and I won’t stick with them. Bellydance accommodates where I am now and gives me lots of room to grow as a fit and healthy person — exercise I can and hopefully will stay with as long as I can move.

You’re Taking WHAT Lessons??? is a post from: Art of the Firebird. Some Rights Reserved. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Over at Discover Mills yesterday, the Nordic Track store was clearancing all of their equipment. I looked half-seriously at their recumbent bike, but where would we put it? And that was the SMALLEST piece of equipment they have!

So this morning before I walked over to have Anna cut my hair, I Googled East Cobb Women’s Fitness, which is right up at the corner — no more than a five minute walk and a fast careful dash across Lower Roswell Road. I have seen it time after time but figured that it was one of those teeny places with a circuit training setup a la Curves and probably an aerobics room, and little else. Nope — I way underestimated it. Their web site made it look like a real gym, albeit for women only.

After my haircut I stopped by for a tour. Sure, the circuit room was there (but it is new???), and a HUGE aerobics classroom. But there is also a cardio room with enough treadmills, recumbent bikes, ellipticals, and steppers that my tour guide said it’s almost never too full to find a machine. There’s a real weight room, with not only machines but a really good free weight selection. The locker room is decent sized and CLEAN :-O! There’s a sauna (though no whirlpool), massage therapists on staff, and a tanning bed (which I don’t need), plus childcare (which I CERTAINLY don’t need either). Your membership comes with two half-hour sessions with a personal trainer to teach you the equipment, and you can continue with a PT for extra fees. The people were FRIENDLY, not just the staff but the members (one woman paused her workout to ask if I was going to join), and the members look like normal women, not anorexic beanpoles!

I joined. It’s a really good facility, has everything I need, is RIGHT HERE, and does away with most of my excuses. I even have my first PT appointment Wednesday afternoon.

Goodbye sloth and flab, hello a better me…

I should have done this long ago! is a post from: Art of the Firebird. Some Rights Reserved. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.