Saturday, February 20, 2010

Class #9 Hard Core Stretch Friday 5:45 a.m. (Kris)


I penciled this class in early in the week because I figured by Friday I’d need a nice stretch class to work out the kinks on my fifth day of this adventure. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m accustomed to doing a fair amount of yoga so stretching is right up my alley.

Naturally, I took note of the word’s “hard” and “core” before the word stretch but even this didn’t scare me too much. I knew this was a Kris Mougeot class and that every class she offers is “hard-core”. For several years, Kris taught a yoga class, which was probably the toughest one I’ve taken but since then I’ve taken hundreds of yoga classes – surely I was ready.

I would quickly discover that the title of the class should be Hard CORE/stretch. We started doing standing ab crunches at 5:45 (for warm up) and completed our last ab exercise at 6:43, before we eased in to the heavenly stretching part of the program. For those keeping score at home, that’s 58 minutes of Hard CORE and 4-5 minutes of stretch. I would complain to management about this except that I AM management. Drat!

Most of this class reminded me of the scene in An Officer and A Gentleman when Louis Gossett, Jr., playing a drill instructor, is trying to make “Mayo” (Richard Gere) give up and resign from the Aviation Officer Training program by forcing him to do a torturous series of ab exercises. Eventually, in pain and frustration, Mayo cries out “I’ve got nowhere else to go”. I love that line. BTW, Mayo survives the ab episode, confesses his hubris, gets the girl (Debra Winger) and becomes an Officer – all in the last five minutes of the movie.

The point is - this was a killer ab class. It’s one of those classes where when you finish -it feels like you’ve really accomplished something. We did crunches till the cows came home. We did enough planks to build a barn. Hand weights, a squishy ball and a hard foam roller were creatively employed in endless ways to make the abs scream – “I’ve got nowhere else to go”.

As I’ve already mentioned, this was another Kris Mougeot production. This is my second Mougeot class and first time to repeat with a teacher. I’ve already introduced Kris (see class #1) but I’ll add a little here. To go along with her big smile Kris has a great sense of humor. When I told her, after class, that I had been looking forward to her “stretch” class she cackled with delight and asked how that had worked out for me. Kris is a multi-talented athlete – while growing up she competed in snow skiing, swimming, and, track and field. If all that isn’t enough - she’s also an excellent horseback rider.

This class was mostly filled with women although my yoga buddy Larry Alman was there too. I have to say that everyone there seemed to handle all these core-building exercises right in stride. It was pretty much only moi that had to back off every so often and rest for a few seconds. I was impressed.

The $25 gift certificate winner from this class goes to LaDona O’Nan.

Okay, that’s 9 down and a 101 to go. Next up, yoga on Saturday morning.

1 comment:

  1. Just an fyi...since you seem to have an affinity for Kris Mougeot's classes and she used to teach yoga..I have commissioned her to teach my Thurs. yoga class when it is your turn to participate...she has agreed to a power ab yoga Bikram class...don't worry, the temp won't go over 107, I promise.

    Stacey

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