Think Punch and Crunch It

As we stood around waiting for Kettlebell 101 to start, the woman next to me said I hate it when we have to jog and, two seconds later, Mikes sends us running around the room imploring us to use every inch of real estate. My calf protests and tightens up but the only thing that holds me back is my stamina. There were 13 of us in attendance and we each got to count off five jumping jacks at one point.

While my calf keeps having little relapses, I can tell that it's on its way back to normal because it survived the jacks and lunges.

After the warm-up, Mike hands out his core workout with variations. And by core workout, I mean that he went for the jugular as usual.

When we got to the Turkish Get-Up, we broke off into groups and Mike worked with the newer folks. I was pretty confident that I had the TGU down because when Mike first introduced it, I practiced at home. But the left side? My brain took a while to compute the steps.

For the first step, Mike told us to think punch it and crunch it. He also told us that our biceps should be by our ear -- something that I get all of the time in Hot Yoga when we're doing chair or tree pose.

We broke off in groups of two to practice the TGU and Mike told us, again, about the point of spotting. He said it's not to interfere but to rescue -- if necessary.

I've been watching the early seasons of The Biggest Loser which I hadn't seen. I like what trainer Kim Lyons told Brian during a last chance workout:

Remember, it's not supposed to be easy.

Had to keep this in mind when Mike had us do UFCs, an exercise that I was introduced to via a Jackie Warner video. UFCs are intense enough without adding a kettlebell to the mix.