Confessions of a Fitness Instructor

Hi everyone!  I haven’t managed to get in and post since last week mostly because I was teaching all my classes last week while not feeling well.  This week while I’m feeling better some of my physical injuries/issues have been bothering me so I’ve been trying to spend my downtime either sleeping or chilling out trying to let my body get back to 100%.

I don’t like leaving the old blog sitting around for so long though so tonight I thought I’d share some random things that have happened recently, or things I’ve done that I didn’t feel were worth a dedicated post of their own but were still interesting.

Today I made tortillas.

I used this recipe that I found on pinterest.  They were pretty easy and turned out quite well.  The recipe was suppose to make 12 tortillas but I forgot what I was doing and ended up making 16 so they were a bit smaller than they would have been had I follow the recipe more closely.  It’s a little disturbing that tortillas in the store have so many ingridants in them when these only have four – flour, shortening, water and salt.  For my first try I think they were a success.

Over the weekend I noticed that my balance (which is normally quite good) was really off.  I couldn’t figure out what the problem was until I found this little charmer on my ankle

which came complete with some swelling.  Looks like I rolled my ankle and forgot about it (not a surprise).  It sure made the past couple days of teaching extra fun :/ thankfully it’s feeling better today.

For Christmas I got Zumba 2 for the Wii.  I wanted it because as a Zumba instructor I somehow felt I needed to beat the game in order to prove myself.  I’ve played it a few times with almost always the same result.  For most of the songs Gina or Tanya “instruct” I’ll get 4 or 5 stars right off the bat, and any song Beto instructs I’ll stink big-time.  There were a few times I only got 1 frigging star.  J would watch me and say he knew something was wrong because I was hitting all the moves but not getting any credit for them.  ”Suzi, I don’t know what you’re going to do about Ringo” he’d say (we’ve decided to call Beto “Ringo” instead.  We’re weird like that).  So this past Saturday I was playing it while he was on the treadmill.  As usual any song with “Ringo” in it I’d suck at.  Finally J asked me to give him the game box/book.  Turns out this whole time I’ve been wearing the controller on the wrong hip.  It’s suppose to be on your right hip and I’ve had it on my left.  I blame it on 1) being a lefty and 2) always reversing my moves when teaching a class.  It seriously never occurred to me that I might have it on backwards.  Which leads me to wonder – how did I ever manage to get 5 starts on all those other songs if I had the controller on the wrong way?

I can’t wait to see the new movie, “Haywire.”  Gina Carano has been my favourite athlete for a number of years (I stand by what I said in the blog post I wrote about her two years ago, I still want to be like her when I grow up!) and I’m super stoked to see her kicking butt on the big screen.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll be at the theatre this weekend

Speaking of Gina and her kicking butt, man have I ever become some sorry little weakling.  I was doing another strength workout on the weekend and it was a sad state of affairs.  Even back in the summer I could bust out full push-ups pretty decently, now I can’t even go all the way to the floor on a knee push-up.  I’ve lost so much muscle in the past 6 months it’s horrible.  And to make matters worse, I’m still teaching so many classes I haven’t figured out how to get 3 or 4 strength workouts in/week like I need to.  Then I go and watch this video of Gina getting her a$$ kicked  and I think of what I baby I am.  My workout on Saturday was like: do 1 set of exercises, sit down and watch TV for 5 minutes, do 5 sad little knee push-ups, watch more TV.  It was really shameful.  I need to get my act together.

I’ve been watching The Tudors on Netflix for the past couple weeks.  I was down to the last 4 episodes of season 4 (which was the final season) when they took it off Netflix (it said that it would be taken down Jan 24th, but I was hoping that meant at the end of the day Jan 24th – it would seem that’s not what they meant).  I searched YouTube to see if someone had posted the episodes there but can’t find them.  As far as I can tell I’ll need to either pay $1.99/episode to watch them on Showtime, or $2.99/episode to buy them on iTunes.  Crap.

While Jen is in Mexico, I had planned to start watching “Dexter” as I know she just finished season 1 so we could watch it “together” when she got back, but last night I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be watching a show like that by myself at 11pm so instead I watched “Ramona and Beezus.”  It’s just about the same thing right?

Well, that’s it for now!

Have any of you seen “Haywire” yet?  

It looks like it’s got pretty good reviews so far.  Back in the early fall when I watched the trailer on YouTube, some goof had commented saying, “This girl sucks, they should have hired Uma Thurman, Kate Beckinsale or another actress that at least knows how to fight for the part.” To which someone replied, “She’s a professional MMZ fighter you idiot.”  Nuff said.

Is it weird that at 28 I’m still talking about what I want to be when I grow up? Or maybe that the person I want to be like when I grow up is actually 5 months younger than me to begin with? Well, either way, when I grow up I want to be like Gina Carano.

Don’t know who Gina is? Well some of you may recognize her from the most recent seasons of American Gladiators on NBC where she was known as “Crush” and was the undefeated champion of the Joust event. In real life, Gina “Conviction” Carano has been the face of women’s MMA (mixed martial arts) for the past few years. What is truly inspirational about Gina is that she only started training in MMA a few years ago (around five I believe) to get in shape herself. Not only did she get in amazing shape, but she went undefeated in her time as a professional fighter up until her last fight with Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos. I’m not hating on Cyborg for beating Gina but really, doesn’t she look a little crazy? Or maybe she’s just been hit one too many times. Seriously she has her own name tattooed on her arm. Who does that? Although I must admit, it would be easier to explain to people how to spell my last name if I could just show them my arm. Maybe she’s on to something here…

(Gina & Cyborg after their pre-fight weigh-in fall 2009)

Back to Gina….as side from being insanely pretty, she is a real women in a knock-you-out, smash you up sport and I respect her for that. Personally, I couldn’t ever fight professionally (or unprofessionally for that matter). Ever since I got that hockey puck in the face while watching a high school hockey game things flying towards my face really freak me out.

Gina really embodies how I would like to look (if I could just stay away from the cake and pizza) as she is the same weight and nearly the same height as me (she’s 5’8”, I’m 5’9”).  She’s fit, she’s strong – she’s not a waif.  I think she is a really great role model to girls and women alike.

So my advice for today is for us women to stop comparing ourselves to the super tiny, waif like stars of Hollywood, and find a “real” role model to be your inspiration. The winter Olympics are coming next month, what a great time to encourage your daughters, nieces, and other young girls in our lives to follow some of the women’s events and encourage them to find an athlete that inspires them. Maybe they’ll be so inspired that they’ll want to take up a new sport, or maybe you’ll be able to re-kindle the love of an old sport, or just exercise in general. While you’re at it, why not find an athlete that inspires you as well? Couldn’t we all use a little more inspiration in our lives?