Training Debra!
Last Friday’s CocoFitness photoshoot was awwwweeesome!! I wish you could have been there with us. Continue reading →
Upcoming Photoshoot!
I’m so excited! On Friday we’ll be doing a photoshoot for CocoFitness, and we have made a lot of preparations to assemble the crew and models for the shoot. Photographer, hair stylist, makeup artist, and five models. And a whole lot of muscle. Now that’s what I call professional! I can’t believe how much work it took to get the shoot ready. Continue reading →
Adventures with Exotic Dancing
Whether on the pole or on the floor, you can’t deny how amazing some of the tricks are that women (and men!) can do while dancing….exotically….
I’ve always been fascinated by how graceful & skilled exotic dancers can be with their dance moves, be it vertically, or uh, horizontally. So a few weeks ago I decided to try the art of pole dancing while I was in Los Angeles, land of many pole dance studios! I took one-on-one lessons with Nicole Williams, the owner of Allure Pole Dance Studio in West LA. No, she’s not a stripper, she just dances like one! And man, she has skiiiiilllz.
So, needless to say, I spent one hour learning sexy dance moves and pole techniques that would make a sailor blush!! And you know what? In that one hour I experienced a whole set of contradicting feelings — empowered but disempowered, embarrassed but bold, tired but energized — it was wild. I felt empowered because I could really express my womanly self while on the pole and on the floor, but man was it hard to get over the feelings of inhibition.
Making a model out of a man *drool*
Tonight, I trained my last client of the evening at the Sports Club LA in DC, and then we left to get some wine and sushi at Cha Restaurant in Logan Circle’s chic, new, and luxurious boutique hotel, the Donovan House. Aside from enjoying the melt-in-your-mouth sushi and the great company, I also loved learning something new about my client:
Flashback to Rio: The Beach Gym
When we were in the studio on Thursday, right before Zumba class started, somehow we started talking about Brazil and I was mentioning that they have a really interesting free, public gym in Rio de Janeiro. I’ve been telling so many people about this that it’s about time I blogged about it =)
Sunny and I spent last Christmas in Brazil, and for part of our trip we stayed with his relatives in Rio (they’re Aussie but living there, how cool is that). One evening we took a stroll along the beach next to their home, Flamenco Beach, and I ran across an outdoor gym that was free to the public. How awesome!!! I was totally not dressed to workout (my luggage was delayed and I borrowed other people’s clothes) but I could not resist approaching the gym full of men with hard bodies at work (who couldn’t?!) and started trying out the equipment.
You could pretty much cover your basic weight lifting needs and then some with the equipment — such as bench presses on a wooden bench, using steel bars capped with concrete weights. Pull ups, tricep dips, overhead presses, bicep curls…. Imagine a gym from the Flintstones!!! I was the only female there, and I think they were intrigued by a female doing all that lifting. On the picture to the right, I’m using their version of the kettlebells, which you can use for power training. In the picture below, a Carioca (a person from Rio) asks to pose with me. I’ve never had that happen in a gym before!
Bravo for the city of Rio and making this facility available to the public. Then again, this beach city is well-known for having many many fit, good looking bodies — probably because they’re exposed on the beach all the time.
Now if every city could have free gyms available, do you think we’d be more fit?