I wish I could sit down and write out all of the things that happened during my trip to New York last week. At some point I hope to at the very least write out the story of the calamidy Jen and I ended up in within minutes of finally meeting each other in person (after our 3 year long internet friendship), as well as the mess I ended up in when trying to get back to Nova Scotia on Sunday (briefly mentioned here). The truth is, so much happens at these events that it is impossible to write about it all, or even talk about all of it. I’m sure J will be hearing about this trip for months and months as I recall little stories and things that happened. Because baby, a lot happened!
As a fitness blogger at a blogging convention it shouldn’t come as any surprise that I jumped at the opportunity to participate in fitness events, and one in particular caught my eye – Working out with The Rockettes!
Pfizer the makers of Centrum and Caltrate hooked us up. We got to go backstage at Radio City Music Hall
and even used the stage entrance!
How many people can say that? Very cool. Once inside we rode the elevator up to the floor where The Rockettes have their dance studios and hold all of their auditions. It was really special to be there as normally only The Rockettes, those auditioning for The Rockettes and the people taking their camp during the summer get the chance to use those spaces.
Once in the studio we were split into two lines and divided up according to our height. The tallest girls were in the middle of each line and then we went in order from next tallest out to the shortest. This is done to make everyone look as tall as possible. And how excited was I when I got to be the left middle split for my row!? That means I was the tallest (yay for tall girls!!)
Once we warmed up we were taught how to do the soldier march from their Christmas Spectacular. Oddly enough I already knew how to do it because that is one of my standard exercises in my Seniors Fitness classes for helping to build hip strength – and don’t tell anyone but my seniors could have shown a few people there a thing or two about how to do it correctly 😉
We also got to learn some of the classic Rockettes kicks, the scoop and slice (otherwise known as the Rockettes arm hold) and our grand finale was a finishing move that we got to put together with the kicks. It was a lot of fun and I wish someone had taken a video of it, but the problem with taking a video is then you’re not in the video! Sheesh. So you’ll just have to take my word for it. Afterwards we got the chance to ask them questions, and have our photos taken.
This is the measuring tape on the wall that everyone auditioning has to get measured against. If you’re not in the height requirement you don’t get to audition (The Requirement is between 5’6″ to 5′ 10 1/2″)
Can we just take a minute to recognize how wide I am standing next to her? During the season they practise from 9-6 6 days/week! They must consume and insane amount of calories!
All in all it was pretty cool morning – and it wasn’t even 9am yet!
After a shower and the morning session it was time for lunch with someone you may have heard of before – Martha Stewart!
For someone who has always been crafty (and by crafty I mean craft-y not CRAFTY) I was pretty excited to get to see her. THEN when they said she would be at the Staples booth at the Expo I had to get my rear there to see if I could meet her. Enter #sadpanda face here as she left before I got to meet her but at least I tried!
After missing Martha I went back to our room to chill for a little bit before heading off to Physique 57 with Courtney. We along with a number of other Fitfluential Ambassadors were invited by Well & Good NYC to attend a class at Physique 57 taught by Tanya Becker herself! After hearing all about barre classes on the interweb this past year or so I was really excited to give one a try!
Holy. Crow. I swear that I died at least twice during that class, and considering I was already having trouble walking up and downstairs from the boot camp and walking I had done the day before this certainly didn’t help the situation!
I believe this was taken just moments before my first death 😉
The Physique 57 classes work on the maximum overload principle. What does that mean? It means they kill you with a smile on their face 😉 (for a more scientific answer check out Gina’s post on Physique 57). Afterwards we were treated to a Chobani refreshment from their new Chobani Soho Bar (which I visited the day before – recap on that coming soon!) and I was happy to partake in one or two of the samples while everyone mingled.
Shortly afterwards Courtney and I had to leave to get back to the hotel to shower and head out to another party. Let me tell you, walking down to the subway – not fun. And then we entered the scariest, smelliest, subway underpass ever. We could barely move but we had to run just to get out of there! Here we are looking sad and scared waiting for the subway car (is that what they are called?) to come.
I look more evil than scared really, but you get the idea. And yes, we were totally matching, though it was completely accidental. Though everyone seemed to think it was funny that the Canadian girls showed up in matching outfits.
The awesome thing is that they sent us all home with a copy of the Physique 57 book and DVD so we can keep on with the workouts at home. I’m excited to give the DVD a try and see how it compares to the live class.
And there you have the Reader’s Digest short and condensed version of BlogHer Day 1.
Have you ever tried PHysique 57 or another barre class? What did you think?
While I swear I did die, I thought the workout was awesome, and am really hoping that I can manage to add the video workout to my schedule at least once a week.
