Day 318 - The Thing

Note : this is a post I wrote about 2.5 weeks ago. I was NOT missing from the gym... in fact, pls consider the past two weeks as me having gone to the gym EVERY DAY. I will post about the actual training and my actual RESULTS later... right now all I want is to SLEEP.

Okay, this is the post that will remain locked until a further unseen date. This will date back about.... 4 days ago. :) But it goes way back before that. As always, I've always thought about being an instructor, although to be honest, I had much erm... "easier" ideas of what they do. Teaching chorey, having fun with the students... it seems like second nature to them. I want to do that too! Especially the teaching chorey part! I just love it when you do something you like with a bunch of like-minded individuals, and you see the effort roll out in synchronized movement. Well, that's what I "feel" it would be like. In actuality - dunno lah. Hahaha.

So I always asked around, "Should I? Should I? Should I take up instructor training?" Of course people around me are very positive about it. "Go ahead!" they say.
Terence said - do it if you're passionate about it.
Swee said - what do you have to lose ... if you have money lying around, why not.
Adrian gave the thumbs up on Facebook. ;P
Su-Yee reacted very positively when I told her I wanted to sign up...

**these are all the "instructor" perspectives, so yes, I was very encouraged**

Most of my friends were also giving me the green light, although I suspect that I whined so much about it they thought that if I finally just got it out of my system then I would stop whining. So finally, this year, I decided to take "the great leap" and signed up for Body Attack training. In the words of Swee --- it could be the start of many "firsts" for me.... who knows. Well, I certainly had no expectations lah. I just expected that "instructor training" was "training someone to become an instructor". I had no idea it was basically "instructor testing"! Felt damn f*cked up once I heard that!

And most people who "know" me (@ the gym lah...) express shock / concern when I tell them I signed up. Cos..... they thought that I would end up doing instructor training for Body Combat or Body Jam. Sigh!!! Means my BA is not good enough la! :O

As for Attack... it's not to say that I'm so prepared or ill prepared for it. On the up side, I am at the fittest that I've ever been. This is not self-delusional grandeur... I really feel it. Although I'm not at 49kg (just weighed myself and I'm 52.5kg), my stomach is flatter, my quads are tighter, my arms are stronger and I can just go dancing / combat-ing / attack-ing straight for hours on end. So what next? I just wanted to challenge myself further. It's getting ridiculous spending 4 hours at the gym so I can feel "tired". I want to do more and more so that I tire faster and "torture" myself more. So I started doing Attack more and more... last week I went to Attack 4 times in a week, which is more than what I read "regulars" do (2-3 times), and it was at horrible times too.... Monday, Thursday, Saturday Sunday and then Monday again. So that's 3 classes back to back with no rest. Of course, got a big break between Mon and Thursday.

(This is all the "historical" data.... don't mind me, I'll come back to the present soon)

So I signed up for the Attack thing, and stupidly THEN only decide to tell people about it (other than Su-Yee who I signed up with... I don't really know that many Attack instructors. I would say I'm only 'close' to one... hahaha. I don't even really know what training entails, except that I read around that it's 2 days long, and there's a mix of presenting choreography and some training. I really thought it was "teaching how to become instructors" so I thought the bulk of it was correcting our technique, giving us tips, teaching us how to cue, kinda like hand-holding us through the process of presenting our own very first chorey. So kindergarten! :D

Anyway, boy was I shocked. Last Thursday, told Janet about my signing up and bam bam bam!
+ shot #1 : have to present chorey as early as first day of training itself (depends on what is alloted to you, this one I already knew, but I thought they were teaching us how to teach the chorey on the day itself, not having to learn all this beforehand!)
+ shot #2 : the "training" is in the form of one master class, and then one hell of a circuit training which involves push ups until the whistle blows, endless jump jacks, infinity kicks, high knees til you pass out, running back and forth the studio pillars before the bell rings, etc.
+ shot #3 : when other people are presenting, you still have to do on the floor. So if there are 20 people presenting, you are basically doing 20 body attack tracks - 19 on the floor and one on the stage.

I can cry!!! And the chorey we have to start learning immediately is from release #65 lor! You can call me a BA65 baby then! Hahaha! I swear, I didn't know we would be learning #65. Guess what? I thought that when we learn, we would be learning supa secret release #66!! Anyway, #65 is not a bad release to train for... honestly like the moves and the songs... so I guess it's fated. Although I would have been happy with #64...

I sent an email to Hazrin telling me what I did (Signing up, that is), and I expected to be met with scoldings ("Haiyah you what made u think u are prepared! Attack is for super hardcore people!!"), but he replied very positively, which made my lil heart sing... hahahaa. And then I got to meet this other guy who signed up for ATtack training and he's seriously SO nice and SO helpful. He's also a "newbie" in the sense that he's not another instructor collecting certs.. hahaha. So he helped me to study for the "instructor training" which is more like "instructor examination". FML seriously.

To prepare for the class, we went through so much.. seriously. A lot of self-evaluating fitness exams (thanks to this, I was able to pass at least 3 out of 4 benchmarks for my fitness exams... failing at the sit-ups only SURPRISINGLY... more on that next time), going for BA and BA only... (that explains the 4 classes in a week) and if it wasn't BA, it would be weight training. I was real afraid of going to any other class aside from BA because I didn't want to forget the choreography of BA65. I wasn't really sure what we would get for the track, but basically I practiced all from
1 - Everywhere
2 - That's Not My Name
3 - Baby I'm On Fire
4 - Tubthumping
6 - Rhythm of the Night
7 - Don't Want To Go To Bed Now
8 - True Faith
9 - Jump

During practice, had to be thick face and ask instructors to correct as much as possible. So many things about Attack that I didn't know before hand just from doing on the floor! Like, all this while, my arm lines for step curl is wrong! I didn't know it was cross and then return to BA set position at the hips. All the while, my hands were still in "blade" position as they reset to BA set position! Things like that! And you know all the while those "you are doing the knees like Body Combat!" statements? I now know what they mean! The armlines for Body Attack is actually a real pain!! But what to do? You have to learn it any way. :) It really makes the moves look MUCH nicer, seriously.

I also practiced "cue-ing" out the tracks after I was semi-sure about the chorey... At first, I kept mixing up the combo, like saying high knee back instead of high knee on the spot... and then the cues that I was giving was not "advanced" enough, meaning I didn't tell ahead one beat what to do next. And I didn't "fill in the silence" with the usual instructor stuff like bending lower, turning your knee out, and so on. Omg. So. Much. To. Work. On.

Today, went for Janet's class again, and she observed me and said my armline has to be stronger... and sigh.. even more to work on la. I am starting to mix up my left and right leg because I am starting to practice on the "instructor side".

For cueing, sometimes the wrong words come out. I panic when the music speeds up. I have a hard time sounding cheerful, I just sound stern, although sometimes the stern voice sounds cool, especially when urging someone on during the lunges. But when you're actually doing the whole song, it's a whole different ballgame from when you're just marking your steps and putting a voice to a SCRIPT you've written. In the end, I can only bark short orders. "High knees up here!", "Jump jacks!!!", "Come to me!", "Here's your option!"

I have no idea how the LM "gods" do it... and they sound so sincere, casual and spontaneous. In contrast, I'm stilted, stiff and I still get the holy-shit-I-f*cked-up look when I miss a cue.

Tell me how am I ~ever~ going to pass this? Feeling so negative now, but it's ok because I'm not the only one in TF. :P Another person said, "Wah, just signed up today... can I cancel my credit card so the payment doesn't go through to Les Mills?" And today, found out that instead of the so-called total 6 people (3 from TF and 3 from FF) signing up, there is now 6 from TF alone. I was hoping that the training would get cancelled, but if it had a chance of getting cancelled when there was 6, it has vanished now that there's 10 and maybe even more from FF ....

The only thing I can do now is practice``practice``practice.. what other choice do I have? Today when I was feeling very depressed, I thought I'll just screw it up and NOT show up at all. But how can I do that when Janet and Hazrin have been so good and trying to help me? In fact, even though my earlier interest in the program is just so that I can make MYSELF better, I'm thinking... if I don't even TRY to become an instructor, it's like such a waste of their efforts. You see? This is the kinda crap that I think about, lol.

Happy enough today that one of the guys who did instructor training before (but donno whether he pass to become instructor) said that I am one feller with damn a lot of stamina (after Attack class), and Janet nodded along.. as did Ryan (muh new friend... hahaha). Ryan some more added, "She did BC before this some more!" Hahaha.. shy shy... but what's the use if I got stamina but I don't have
TECHNIQUE!
STRENGTH!
CHOREY!
CUEING! and of course that elusive
LES MILLS MAGIC!

Hahahaha! Hope to settle chorey and cueing by the end of this week.. I don't have much time left and praying for the master trainer to fall sick / training to be cancelled is not going to help la. That just wastes time. Cannot think this way any more!! Look forward to it!! Make yourself better!! *gung ho a bit*

---

15-July-2009

The chorey and cueing is getting there... I was even excited to "pretend present" a track... :D But after one track, I totally "pancit" and from a 45 minute planned training session, I had to stretch it to 1.5 hours long. That's because after jumping around and talking for 5 minutes, I had to rest for another 5 minutes. Of course this is not helping me to become a better instructor / have more stamina... but I've been training so much these past few weeks... and the training is already this weekend. How can I continue!!! My body is sooooo weak already just before the training is about to start and we are supposed to be in tip-top condition. Praying that I can get warm-up track or "That's Not My Name" since these are two tracks that I know a lot about! Especially warm-up.. kekeke. Just hope it's not Tubthumping! Although I love Chumbawamba, I practiced the freaking 48 lunges twice EACH DAY in the past 3 days and that was really a bad bad idea ok! If you ask me to do during presentation time, sure cannot go as low as when I did during the launch of new release at TF. That time so energetic and was like, "Look at me Hazrin/Edmund/Janet! See how low my back leg can go!!" <--- so LOA, hahaha!

Where do I practice? I practice at the gym - women's only workout area or at my office gym! The office gym is actually just empty, no equipment... we usually use it to practice for dance presentations. Anyways, I got Ochen to give me the keys to the gym (gym is locked because at the moment there's audio equipment inside) and fuuh! Damn nice to practice there! Private and huge space to move around with mirrors all around. Not like women's only workout area where there's a lot of women... and I got caught practicing there.. so malu. There was one girl openly laughing at me wtf. Well, from this experience I learned how to be THICK FACE.

Quite gung ho about the practice already... accepted my fate... aim to pass with shadow also can. Just hope not to fail!