A muddy kind of day

For all I’ve been writing about aerobics, people must have thought that I have seen and done it all. No! I’ve never been to outdoor mass aerobics. It is where the many participants would be dancing in the open air (like padang bola or community hall) and the instructors (usually more than one) would stand in front stage, facing you.

TTDI Jaya residents had one yesterday morning in conjunction with Syabas launching their new water metre. No offense to those who enjoyed outdoor aerobics but I found it terribly uncomfortable. First, being in public place meant that you would have to dress decently. In my case, complete with tudung and long sleeve t-shirt. After five minutes, I was soaking wet with sweat. Secondly, being resident in now famous TTDI Jaya could only meant that the ground was forever wet with rain. It rained heavily the night before so instead of nice grassy football field, we had a wet mushy muddy ground that not only soaked through my dainty cross trainer but splattered me with mud from head to toe. (After a round of aerobics, netball game and searching for Amri at drawing contest) And I decided to wear white top, shoes and tudung for the occasion…ceh!

Also the presence of men in the group did make me a bit worried, because you know, as what the politicians often preached about, we women should never entice the opposite sex (duh) with any sexy move. And aerobics dance had evolved to be very sexy indeed. We do not want woman exercises to be banned from this country, no?

Well, I should have stayed with studio aerobics. I did not really enjoy being mud splattered from head to toe and sweating like a pig. And I hate not having firm traction on my feet because being a big momma I was, I had a fear of slipping and toppling over the cameraman who for reasons known only to him, kept his videocamera zoomed to me and not even bothering to be subtle about it. Did we know each other?

And this morning when I reached Seribadan, I felt so lucky. I’ve taken this place for granted because I owned it. I actually loved its wood flooring, mirrors, airconditioners, stacks of clean towel, drums of cold water and most of all, the privacy it offered which enable me to dress up in almost anything. It was tiny studio but sufficient.

Anyway, I’ll give it another try sometimes but I’ll check the ground first. Plus, I’ll wear everything black. It should be fun if the ground was not mushy and I didn’t get confused without mirrors.

The myth about sweat

I wanted to post this in Seribadan but nothing happened after I clicked the 'publish' button. So I publish it here in the meantime....

What’s the Sweat?
MYTH ONE : If you’re not sweating, you’re not working out.

There are a lot of misconceptions about sweat. Hear this fact: Sweat has only one purpose — to cool the body. When your body temperature rises as a result of the energy production required by exercise (or the heat of the day), a couple of responses are triggered. First, the heart beats faster to move blood around the organs more quickly to absorb heat. At the same time, capillaries just under the skin dilate so blood can be closer to the skin surface, which is usually cooler than body temperature. If these cooling mechanisms aren’t enough, your sweating reflex kicks in — something like a built-in shower. Water from the blood moves to the skin surface through a network of more than 2.5 million ducts, or sweat glands, in the skin. When this “sweat” — which is composed of 99% water and 1% salt and other protein and fat-based metabolites — evaporates, it cools the body and leaves a salty-tasting residue on your skin.
You’ll notice the sweat if you live in a humid climate that deters evaporation. You may never think you sweat in a dry climate, where the same workout, at the same temperature, produces the same amount of sweat, but is not noticed because it evaporates so quickly.
Although sweat has no odor itself, when it is combined with bacteria on the body, it’s time to roll out the deodorant to combat the unpleasant odor associated with sweat.

MYTH TWO : Sweating helps you lose fat.
Some people still come to the gym wearing sweater suits designed to make them sweat profusely. If asked why they are using this gear, they often respond, “To sweat off fat.” Had they said, “To lose weight,” they would be accurate but misguided. Any post-workout decrease in weight is water-based sweat, not fat. Fluid replacement returns the scale to a pre-workout reading. The danger in this thermal approach to weight management is that any sweat produced cannot evaporate and cool the body.

MYTH THREE : Sweating rids the body of toxins.
There are no toxins in sweat. Toxins are removed by a healthy kidney and liver working full time to counter all we do to abuse our bodies with poor exercise, eating, and lifestyle habits. The body isn’t detoxified when it sweats. It’s overheated.
Sweating dehydrates the body. A dehydrated body is prone to heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Lost fluid must be replaced. Drinking water is a good place to start. A cup of water before and after your workout and sipping your water during exercise will suffice..

Source : www.walkabout.com

Belly Dance Workshop

I'm organising a 3 hours belly dance workshop at Seribadan next month (16 Dec). Anyone interested, just email/call/sms me. Due to space issue, I'm limiting the class to 20 pxs. But worry not, if there are more than 20 people who want to dance with me, I'll arrange for one more class the next day.

Print the voucher above to get the discount :)

FISAF Training - Day 4

A whole day of practical lessons.

Unfortunately, I've not been exercising since 20th Nov. Plus with my 10 days raya holiday which I spent either eating (a lot) or lounging around either at my parents place or my in law's like a belched hippo. Needless to say, whatever muscle strength I had acquired was slowly evaporating, plus a stamina that was not even half of usual.

Anyway. The coughing & runny nose rescued me. Because the trainer was concerned that I looked (and sounded) so sick, and my blood pressure drop down to a dangerous level (theoretically) I was excused from most of the show. But the trainer, a petite Germany lady, was pregnant and she was so fit. So the ego made a show. Instead of admitting that I was sick and would be unable to perform most of the stuffs, I joined in the show. If a preggy lady could do it, so could I. Plus, I've practically lived with below average blood pressure all my live.

Trouble started from the beginning. For a fitness testing module, I was deemed unfit, due to my low BP, erratic heart beat (blamed it on the cough syrup & that flu pill) and a whole lot more. Resistance training was a nightmare. My lunges, squat and whatever posture done were horrible. At one time, I couldn't stand up from a lunge position. Then came the weight. Even with the lightest dumbbell, my arms felt leaden. Duh! Don't even get me started on bodybar. And core conditioning lesson? My body didnt have a core anymore. It was just leaden arms and legs plus a painful head :)
Adoiiiiii.....I couldnt have picked a worse time to attend fitness course.

The good thing was, I made lotsa new friends. A super cool salsa dance instructor, a yogi from Ipoh, a super fit japanese lady, another super fit japanese+germany+portugease+american expat, a chinese professor, a bunch of fitness instructors from CF which I certainly could count on for emergency replacement instructor and an ex accountant from sabah who owns a travel agency and promised me a 'friend' rate should i ever wanted to tour sabah. Cool!