Breaking Sweat at Breakbone

On the hottest day of the year, so far, I started my classes with Breakbone. 94F or 34C is hot by anyone's standards, add to that a room with windows on 2 sides, black curtains at one end and black flooring, air conditioning units that only seem to circulate warm air and you've got one sweaty betty. In fact, there were 16 sweaty bettys all rolling round the floor leaving little pools of sweat everywhere for other people to mop up or slide on.

Now you've got the picture, the class itself was fantastic.

We started with an hour of boot camp pilates. No stopping between exercises, no explanations, straight into the leg swings and the 100s (for those of you not in the know the 100s are where you lift your head and both legs as close to the ground as possible then beat your arms downwards not quite touching the floor 100 times) followed by a sequence of stomach exercises, press ups, side bends, side dips (you balance yourself on one arm and have both feet out straight to your side - like a sideward press up position - then let your whole body dip and your shoulder lifts you back up), more press ups, lunges (I've never enjoyed lunges so much) and a few more press ups to finish us off.

By this point I've lost about 2 litres of body fluid and my head's beginning to throb.

Quick water break then onto the technique part of the class. They're not kidding when they call it Bodyslam! After a few sequential falls and rolls where you slowly figure out which parts to land on and which parts to avoid you go for it. A little hop up from squat position then land on your back or your side or your forearms. I was actually quite pleased with myself that at no point did I fall onto anything bony. A few of the falls I didn't get at all, one where you start in a bridge position (balancing on your shoulders and feet with your hips pushed up towards the ceiling), lift one leg the push your whole body onto your shoulders before landing in a foetal position. It just didn't happen at all, I understood what I was trying to do but I couldn't get my body to flip up and over like that. I am, however, a dab hand at backward falls. You start in a squat position, tiny hop up then imagine your legs being pulled away from underneath you so you land on the side of your back (either side but never your spine - ouch!).

All of this builds up until you're pushing off one hand and landing in the same positions, I think I would have done better at this if I was sure that my arms were still connected to my body and my eyes weren't swirling from dehydration.

The mark of a good class is that no matter how hard you work, if the exercises are organised and performed properly, you shouldn't have any bad aches and pains. There are good aches and pains, ie. you feel all the muscles you've been using and they need a wee bit of a stretch out but you're still able to function normally and bad aches and pains, ie. you have an angry, swollen joint that you can't get out of bed because of.

This was definitely a good class.

At the end of it, I spoke to some of the Breakbone dancers and they're interested in getting involved in a little film project while I'm out here, after all I'm going to need some material to get started on my MSc Screendance course in September.