HIP HOP BOOTY for beginners

It was back to Hip Hop Booty after work today. I have to tell you: THIS.CLASS.IS.SO.MUCH.FUN. The class is led by P & J. Their styles are completely different and yet both awesome. They are really good sports as well. I spoke to them prior to class and explained that I blog and wanted to take pictures. I even asked them to show off a little extra for the camera. After answering several questions (like: Do you do it for a company? NO. Do you do it for money? NO. How many hits do you get in a day? Oh...uh...thousands. *cough, cough, cough* Why do you do it? I have absolutely no idea but I love it.) They promised that they would show off for me but not tonight. You see, P is preparing for some sort of fitness competition and was completely wiped out. He said he would just be consulting and not teaching tonight. That and the fact that we are working on creating a new dance and because of all the starts and stops, it didn't make for good video. But not one to be easily discouraged, I did video anyway.

The class is made up mostly of young girls but I'm not always the oldest. Believe me when I say that I am NO GOOD at hip hop but I am improving. It's great exercise and really fun. Still, there are some moves that this tired old body just won't do. And when I try, well....it's just not pretty.

Tonight, we worked on some choreography that broke us into two groups and my group was shooting at the other group. After all the crap I've given Nole Boy for the last week about listening to thug rap, I felt like a bit of a hypocrite. I'm still no fan of the song we were using but as they used to say in American Bandstand, "It has a good beat and you can dance to it."

The video is of the same choreography we've been working on for the last few weeks but now it's slowed down and to a different song. It is supposed to help you build your skills to slow down the steps. It is more difficult to do it slowly. This was prior to the shoot 'em up that we did at the end of class. Once P gets back from competition, I'll get P&J to really show their stuff for you. Until then, here is a not so good sample of the class. As you will see, P couldn't keep himself from dancing a bit once the music started.

To what lengths will you go to embarrass yourself for the sake of fitness?

DANG THAT PAULA DEEN, ANYWAY

OK, so if you go back to the beginning of this blog, you will find that it was started with the idea of improving my fitness level and losing weight. I was putting myself out there into the great big bloggy world and making myself accountable. It is an ongoing struggle that challenges me and sometimes p*sses me off. I've exercised regularly for a few years now after a long lapse of sedentary living. But even with all my extra activity, my quest for weight loss has failed miserably. But I always say, "Even when I fall flat on my face, I've progressed at least five feet and two inches." I'm not a quitter. I started pushing myself in the gym to try new things and spice up my work-out routine. I began to "really" watch what I ate as opposed to the healthy appetite diet I had been practicing for years. And things were going well. I lost a few pounds, 14 to be exact. And I blogged all about it.

Then along came Paula Deen and all her yummy, creamy goodness. Our trip to Savannah was so much fun. Dare I say, toooooo much fun! There was that wonderful meal about which I've already told you and then there was candy, more fried food (what trip to the old south would be complete without fried food?) and then the beer and did I mention that thanks to D1, I was stocked with Sweet Tea vodka? Oh and Pualani introduced me to Mojitos. If you haven't had one of those, you really should. Of course, I wouldn't have missed any of it for the world. But my week off the diet wagon has pushed the scales in the wrong direction, dang it and that's just not fair. Why is it that it takes months and years even to lose weight and it all can come undone in one stinkin week! OK, it didn't all come undone but when you're trying to lose weight and instead you find it........ Well, it ain't right.

So today, it was back to the gym. I've been taking a Hip Hop Booty class on Mondays. The instructors are two young, fit personal trainers who apparently spend their evenings out in clubs because these guys can DANCE! I feel strongly that if I have to exercise, I prefer to be entertained during the process. Usually the entertainment is self-provided as I can laugh at myself and that works for me. But these guys are my new source of entertainment. I forgot to bring my camera into the gym and so all I had was my phone and the above picture didn't really capture what I was after but let's say this is the preview to next week's post when I show you what Hip Hop Booty is all about. Stay tuned and as long as I survive the week and don't forget that I promised, I will tell you all about it with pictures and maybe even video if I can figure that out. *sigh* Bear with me, people, I'm learning. And I've come so far.