Sunday, January 30, 2011

fcbd dance conditioning class

If you go to Yelp.com and seek out "Anita Lalwani", you'll notice that she has all the highest ratings. And all the ratings and stars are true: she is one hell of a lady.

Just so you know, today, I woke up with the sound of rain. Yes, it was raining AGAIN. And it was bad because I had to be in FCBD's studio by 10 AM. So I got dressed, hurried down to the dining area to have breakfast and went on my way. Turned out, it was not only raining, it was WINDY as well. So the wind blew my poor little green umbrella upside down (who knew that Samsonite didn't make sturdy umbrellas like they made the suitcases?) and I had to wear my puppy-ear flap hat to cover my head. It didn't cover my face, though, so the drizzles (it was only drizzling, thank goodness) hit my face.

Well, at least the BART station is near so I could get there in a jiffy.

It was also drizzling in Mission, but I got to the FCBD studio in time. Yay!

I've been to so many all female dance classes that I'm accustomed to the sight: yes, once more, I'm the only guy in class. It's a good thing that Dance Conditioning (with Ms. Lalwani) is not a general class so I can join.

We started with the floor work routine. There was this hard rolling styrofoam that we use underneath our calfs, butt, hips, inner thighs, and spine that act as a massager. Oooh, my calves hurt like hell when I was rolling on them, but it felt good afterwards. After that, we did the crunches on the mat.

And then came the dance drill and we worked on the Arabic, Arabic Hip-Twist, Arabic With Flourish, Turkish Shimmy, Turkish Shimmy with Arms, and Shimmy with Turns. Ms. Lalwani divided us in two groups: beginners and intermediates. I hurried off to the beginners but she told me to join the intermediate instead. Yeah. I had doubts myself. They turn out to be true.

The intermediate group was later divided into two trios and I joined two ladies. They knew the timing (and the vocabulary) very well. I blundered a lot. *sigh*

Next came the station work-out. Ms. Lalwani set up stations for us to work for two minutes on each station and go to the next for another two minutes and so on. The first station used a weight, the second one had a tiny inflated ball to be put underneath our lower back as we did leg lifts and under the center of our shoulderblades as we did the upper-ab crunches.

The third one had the big fit ball and we were supposed to do back-ups for one minute and change to push-ups on the next minute. The fourth one was shoulder press. The fifth one was lunges. The sixth one was squat and leg exercises using leg restraints. The last one was triceps work-out.

A red-headed warrior named Bethany who also lead my intermediate improv group, called me to spare with her (each station was done by two people). Holy cow. She was even more powerful than I was. I mean, I'm embarrassed. I know I've quit the gym a long time ago, so I can pat myself on the back and offer myself a proper justification. When I stopped to rest, Beth didn't. When I took the lower level challenge, Beth took the higher one. She later confessed (as I was catching my breath when we were doing the leg restrain exercise on the sixth station) that she had been taking body conditioning classes with Ms. Lalwani for years.

Well that's endurance.

After the whole station thing ended, Beth told me that Ms. Lalwani would make us redo the whole thing all over again. I glanced at the clock and saw it was already five minutes to eleven. I doubted it.

We regrouped and did dance drills to two more songs. I felt better than the first try. Yay! Although my arms were droopy due to the station work-outs.

And when it was done, ding ding ding... Ms. Lalwani told us to go back to our stations and do each one for only one minute. Thank goodness.

When everything was finally done, I felt exhausted. Extremely exhausted. But extremely happy. It had to be the most gratifying exercises I've had.

Beth told me to smile whenever it's painful: the more pain, the bigger smile.

I'm just glad I spared with her. I need the challenge.

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