Friday night velocity

I went to the Friday night Velocity session this evening, as I had spent most of the day sitting on my butt at a client's office. I needed to move, but debated going to the class or just going for a long walk with the dogs or maybe a short run by myself. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't spent the hour of travel time to get to class and return home, and went for a run instead.

When I arrived at Velocity, about a minute before class was scheduled to start, I dashed to the bathroom quickly, desperately needing to be there for a short bit. When I ran back out of class, I couldn't figure out which group of people was the adult fitness class. I recognized no one in what could have been the adult group, nor did I recognize the instructor as an instructor (I knew him as the program director, not a coach or instructor).

Figuring there wasn't any other group of adults in the facility, I went up to the group that could have been the adult fitness group, and started jumping in the strange way everyone else was jumping. The instructor came up to me, looking at me funny. "Is this the adult fitness class?" I asked.

"Yes. Are you new?"

Given that I've been going to this place for two years, had already introduced myself to this guy, and had been associated with the facility for far longer than he had, the question was a little odd.

"Uh, no. I've been coming for two years."

"Oh, coming back from a break? Haven't been here since September?"

WTF? I was here two days ago. "No, I'm usually here at 6 AM."

Everyone in the group turned to look at me. If I weren't me, I'd have looked at me, too. I don't know why I said 6 AM, given that 8:30 AM was far more accurate. I suspect I was just annoyed at this accusation of alleged laziness, when I had been relatively good about heading to class. Worse, I was actually AT class, and STILL receiving the heckles.

The workout itself was a little lame. Yes, the workouts are as hard as you make them, so I tried to make it hard, but it wasn't a fundaementally difficult progression of exercises. This may have been because we had two new, out of shape, older women in the class. There's only so much tailoring you can do with some really in shape tall Asian guy, a mostly in shape short white guy, a mostly in shape thin woman (that's me), an older could-be-in-shape tall white guy who didn't move very well, a getting-in-shape short Asian woman and two really really out-of-shape can't-even-jog women. I don't know if they are older than I am, but they defintely weren't in shape. No way.

So, the workout was three rounds with a one minute break after the three rounds, between switching exercises, of

20m jog (which I did as a sprint)
20 twisting ball touches against a wall
20m jog (which I also did as a sprint)
20 weighted squats with a med ball

Followed by a 1 minute rest.

The twisting ball touches were done with a medicine ball, touching the wall to the left next to the left knee, then standing up and touching the wall over the right shoulder. After 10 of those, switch to touching the wall to the right of the right knee, then over the left shoulder.

Three rounds of:

20m jog (which I did as a sprint)
20 kneeling ball touches tosses against a wall
20m jog (which I also did as a sprint)
20 weight squats with jump

Followed by a 1 minute rest.

The kneeling ball touches were also done with the medicine balls, kneeling parallel to a wall and touching the ground with the ball, then the wall over the shoulder closest to the wall.

20m sprint
20 weighted russian crunches
20m sprint
20 wide stance squats

Followed by a 1 minute rest

The wide stance squats were done with the medicine ball, too, with a squat followed by a "butt squeeze."

I kicked butt on this round. Unsurprising, given how I'm built for this exercise.

After the rounds of weighted ball lameness, we did a series of situps that really weren't difficult. Instead of situps with, oh, a 15 pound med ball, we used a 3 pound ball and a 1 pound ball. Why we bothered with the 1 pound ball, I have no idea.

I left the facility thinking, eh, that wasn't really worth it. I probably should have just used a heavier medicine ball, maybe done more exercises, tossed harder, jumped higher. I know I wasn't the only one with rolling eyes, though, at the workout.