Passed!

Passed!

What a weekend!  It was tough, it was grueling, it was long, it was filled with moments of needing to dig deep down within and moments of pushing beyond your limits.  It was AMAZING.  I am so very exhausted as I write this, I hope my thoughts come out the way they should.

I woke up Saturday, ready to take on the world, despite my road rash knee/leg.  What I didn't know then is the pain I was feeling in my leg/knee was nothing compared to how my body is feeling NOW after hours and hours of  crazy fitness fun.   After introductions, we got right into the master class.....we started with some lecture/educational information and shortly after that we did our first of two presentations.  I was nervous, but felt confident that I knew my stuff with regards to choreography and that coaching would or should come relatively easy with my Body Pump experience.  My biggest concern was getting the left/right cues correct since you have to talk in opposites.  I had track 8 for my first presentation and it's a fairly long track- almost 8 minutes and it's right after a tough Muay Thai track that is high intensity, breathe-sucking, six rounds of combat.   I stepped up and got right into it...I felt good.  I felt confident.  The coaching kicked in, the cueing was right on...I know we talk about moments in class, moments that we want our participants to feel- the fitness magic, the chills, the goosebumps.  There is one part of track 8 where you jog in place before you go for the last round of jabs (endless jabs) and I seriously got the chills and goosebumps...it was truly magical, I almost cried....but smiled instead and kept encouraging everyone to make it through the end of the battle.   Afterwards, we received our feedback for the first presentation- I was given very good feedback and two things to focus on regarding technique (no surprise here since this is relatively new to me)- extend my punches more and always come back to my guard.  Hmmmmm, the very same two things that my friend Donna told me a few weeks ago and I thought I was doing it, but not.   The rest of the day was focused on technique drills and more education.  Came home, showered, had dinner, did some "homework", received a lovely foot massage from hubby and then crashed!

Today was an early morning and we kicked the day off pretty quickly with presentation number 2 on the same track as yesterday- hopefully showing that we did our homework and show improvement.  Fortunately, we all did.  I flubbed one part of the choreography- ironically it was the same flub that our trainer Rebecca did the day before in the Master class, so I didn't feel so bad.  The key with any choreography flub it to recover from it and hopefully the error is only between "Me, myself & I"...I didn't get the chills like the day prior, but still felt like I nailed the track overall and did show improvement.  The feedback concurred, so I was given the next level of things to work on.  After some more education, we then had the Body Combat Challenge...and I'm not going to go into detail because this was what freaked me out the most - the not knowing what challenge we'd be put up to...but let's just say that the 2 minute stations were killer and challenging and at one point I was "this" close to having a breakdown because one section was SO.F'N. HARD for me.  But I "sucked it up buttercup" and kept pushing to do it.  How rewarding to be done and to have passed the challenge and worked it, and worked it hard.  After lunch, more education and then we finished the day with our third presentation on a different track.  I was struggling with the track all afternoon- I could not get coordinated with my roundhouse kick and back fist punch- my arm just would not cooperate and do what it was supposed to do, when it was supposed to do it.  But I think I nailed about 6 of the 10 reps of this combo.  I can only use fatigue as my rationalizing for that because I was doing it correctly all week.  Once we were done, the day was a wrap and we were given our final assessment for the weekend and YAY- 3/3 = PASS!   I was thrilled to get 3/3...I had thought I might get 2/3 given some technique areas- but I nailed enough of the technique and showed improvement over the two days to receive the 3/3.  Yay me.  Super excited and happy to have this weekend behind me.  However, after a couple down days, it's back at it to perfect everything else so that I can get ready to tape class for my video assessment.

We had such a great group of instructors in this training and it was nice to get to know new friends and we all shared a phenomenal experience together.  I made it a point to high five everyone after their presentation and prior to one person's presentation I could see on her face the nerves and I just went up to her patted her on the back and told her "you got this...you can do it"...after her presentation she came up to me and thanked me for giving her that comment before her track.  Felt so good to help someone else out.   I was super excited to see Laurie who used to be a corporate employee for 24 hour a long time ago..she was always such a nice director who I'd run into at the Expos and really remembered her energy and spirit- we partnered a few times over the weekend and it was just really nice to reconnect with her.

Overall, great weekend.  Rewarding experience in so many ways.  When I signed up for this training, it was a leap of faith- can I do this?  Will I get through?  Will my troubled injuries let me?   I'm happy to report that my degenerative toe is not hurting me - my feet were overall sore..but that's to be expected.   My boss at Gold's, Robin was very supportive when I told her I was signing up and she had faith in me, even when I wasn't sure I had faith in myself.   I could not have done this without the support of other tribe members and friends and family.

Well, I am POOPED and must get to bed...sadly, I need to teach Body Pump at 7am and sure hope I can lift my arms and legs! HA!  First step, getting off the couch and walking up the 14 stairs to my bed!