Have you ever heard anyone say Body Balance is easy. I have. Quite a few Clubs position it to members calling it “the easy class”.
If you’re a Body Balance instructor, if you’re a participant in Body Balance class you’ll know that this is nonsense. Body Balance delivers a tough workout. Although not aerobically challenging, from a strength and flexibility point of view you feel the intensity.
But even I wasn’t ready for how tough Body Balance release 63 is.
They held the Quarterly Workshop at Club 64 in Dunfermline. The first thing I noticed was how hot the room felt. In fact it seemed hotter than a Bikram yoga studio. I had to place my yoga towel on my mat to stop myself from sliding off. The wooden floor became a sweaty sea slippery moisture.
However our master trainer was Ann-See Yeoh who delivered, as always, a fabulous experience both during the educational and taking us through the new tracks.
None of the poses appeared impossible to do for any of our participants. It’s just the combined intensity of everything together really took me by surprise. That combined with the hot room made it a very intense experience.
Here are a few things that I remember about the class.
- The Thai Chi warmup flowed beautifully with figure eight arms sweeps, arm circles and birds tails.
- Sun salutations challenges your arms and shoulders because on each round we go from downward facing dog, to plank, to crocodile, to upward facing dog and back to down facing dog twice in each salutation.
- Standing strength set to “Only You” a song by Ellie Goulding lasts for 8 minutes and shatters your legs. In fact I was shaking by the end of those eight minutes.
- In the abs track we see the return of “Pilates hundreds” and all sorts of combinations of crunches and hovers.
- For forward bends and hamstring stretches we have an interesting new concept called the “downward facing dog flip”. I’m not going to say anything more about that. You’ll just have to wait until the new releases come out to see what that is.
This will be a very challenging but very exciting release and I can’t wait for my music and DVD to arrive so that I can start learning it and deliver it to my members in the New Year.
Now it’s your turn: Have you been to your Quarterly Workshop? What were your first thoughts about Les Mills Body Balance release 63? Please leave a comment or post a link to your own review.
This one is a really athletic workout, for sure! There’s something for everyone. Although it’s got some genuine challenges in it for every level of fitness, rest assured it’s very enjoyable. I definitely noticed some upper body doms the next day! There’s a good upbeat element of fun in this release. The core back track had me laughing once we all got swimming in close quarters!