Last night on a whim, I took a new-to-me class at our gym, and I am feeling it today.  We typically play Ultimate Frisbee on Tuesday nights, but when I arrived home yesterday evening, I just wasn’t in the mood.  Andrew grabbed a quick dinner and headed back out the door for UF.  I wanted to take my time, enjoy dinner, and relax for the remainder of the night.

After eating my perfect potatoes, steamed broccoli, and marinated baked chicken at a leisurely pace, I was bored and regretted staying home.  I checked our gym’s group fitness schedule and saw that there was a Cardio Extreme class happening in 30 minutes.  Before I could talk myself out of it, I made the decision to go.  It was only half an hour;  how hard could it be?

Hard.  It could be very hard.

I walked up to the door of the group fitness room at the same time as another woman and decided to get the scoop on the class from her.

“Have you taken this class before?”

“Yeah!  Have you?”

“Nope!  Is it tough?”

“Yeah, this is the toughest instructor.  Have you taken this class with anyone before?”

“Haha, no…”

“Oh… well, if you can survive her, you can handle any of the instructors!”

Awesome. 😉

We began with a warm up–jogging around the room, jumping jacks, butt kicks, fast-paced squats–and then moved into circuits.  The first round of circuits consisted of jumping rope, high-stepping through a rope ladder on the floor, jumping on and off a step, walking lunges across the room and sprinting back, and skaters.  It was fast-paced, and by the second station I was thinking, “What did I sign up for?!”  

After the first round of circuits, we did another “easy” jog around the room, jumping jacks, etc., then began circuit 2–mostly variations of the stations from circuit 1.  We did mountain climbers instead of skaters, and skips instead of lunges.  Finally, we cooled down.

I loved the high-intensity;  I pushed myself much harder than I would have if I’d been alone, which is one of the reasons I love group fitness classes!  As much as I was hurting in, oh, the first five minutes, the class actually went by very quickly.  Afterwards, I knew I’d received an awesome workout, and that’s a great feeling.

As my brother said when I told him about the class, “An intense 30 minutes is wayyyyyy better than a casual hour.”  So true.

Have you ever taken a Cardio Extreme class similar to this?
Do you incorporate high-intensity cardio into your weekly routine?