My latest discovery in the Wide World of Workouts: There's such a thing as getting your rear-end kicked while sitting on it.
I found this out when I realized I'd have to find an alternative for my beloved dance workouts -- Zumba, moves or freestyle dancing interspersed with jumping jacks and anaerobic exercises. The fall of 2016 brought suspected sciatica issues to my left leg, and my right knee decided to go squirrelly on me too. Both tend to want to protest when I descend a flight of stairs or, I'm sad to say, cut a rug.
Around Thanksgiving, after another of the long workout slumps prolonged by leg issues, I decided it was time to get moving again. Once again I cranked up the music and resumed the dancing and jumping jacks. Maybe, just maybe, I could get the ol' leg and knee to cooperate. Exercise should make it feel even better!
Um, nah. I was left limping like a mauled wildebeest that had barely escaped being the breakfast of lions. OK, God, I know I need to stay off of water slides because those never go well for me ... but I can't even have this?"
I'll give God credit for the idea that popped up in my mind: What about chair dance workouts?
Hmmm. I have chair-danced forever. So this might just count as exercise, huh? Suh-weet. I went to the phone and called on Dr. Google. Behold, there were not only chair dance workouts; there were chair workouts, period, with which YouTube beckoned.
I tried the chair dancing first: a few short videos led by Paul Eugene, a fitness leader in his early 60s with an infectious joie de vivre and a signature workout whoop -- "WoohooooooHOO!" -- and other chair-dance videos by Alexis Perkins of Fuzion Fitness. This was chair dancing. For fitness. Not just because you're trying to put off using the bathroom or your husband/boyfriend won't dance with you at the gala you're attending or you're trying to stay awake at the boring meeting.
These workouts are usually advertised upfront as being especially suitable for senior citizens or others with disabilities or injuries that limit movement. Hope they're not too tame or "old-person"-y, I thought at first. You can only get so much of a workout when the workout song music is "It's Only a Paper Moon."
The videos, for the most part, were fun. I chair-romped my way through Caribbean dance, Latin dance, R&B dance. I found out about Jodi Stolove's Chair Dancing fitness program and videos.
As one used to workout challenges, I soon found the dance videos too few in number and a bit less than sweat-flinging. Thus came curiosity about nondance workouts, which, included cardio and strength training and bore names such as "Fat Burner, Get Moving in the Chair" and "Seated Sweatfest."
I saw that Paul had a couple of "Turbo Chair" workouts, with and without dumbbells, so I sat myself in front of them and pressed play. Wow. The music was pumpin' and so was Paul. So was I, until that occasional moment I was forced to stop trying to keep up with the man and catch my breath.
They were my first inkling that some of the toughest and most vigorous workout moves can be modified for a chair. Yes, there are such things as seated jumping jacks. Seated abdomen crunches. Seated Russian twists. Seated side planks. One can even march and run and kick-box and do such torture moves as Frog Reaches, Toy Soldiers ... in a chair! I made a slew of chair-dance playlists, also featuring videos from the likes of Pahla Bowers of Pahla B Fitness; HASfit with Coach Joshua Kozak.
The most challenging workouts are by the youthful, impossibly thin trainers who usually train the able-bodied, but who made chair workouts specifically for fellow fitness beasts who are recovering from foot or leg injuries. These trainers assume you can lift both feet high in the air in rapid succession, pumping your arms up and down at the same time forever ... then go right on to the next contortion with no break or sip of water. But at least they aren't like the hypocrite chair-workout folk. These are the trainers who want you to get out of the chair and use it merely as support for standing workout moves or worse, use it as your own personal dang pommel horse. (I'm talking about you, Billy Blanks.) With seated workouts, as with regular workouts, you carry on where you are in hopes that that position will change for the better as you gain strength.
Where I am is back at Square One and a Half. The Cares of This World descended once again. Which meant another hiatus, out of which I've recently emerged. Here's hoping I can keep one foot -- or rear-end cheek -- in front of the other this time. And I hope someone else is inspired to do the same.
Email:
hwilliams@arkansasonline.com
Style on 05/13/2018