OK, THERE’S the soreness. In the end, I did 10 classes last week (9 that I’m counting). That was too many. I was feeling pretty great up until about 8 or 9 or so, and then in the morning on Saturday, my quads were so tight, I couldn’t bend, which made my final break class kind of ouch. This week I shant try so hard to be a hero.
Luckily all was healed with 3 consecutive baths (hot, freezing, hot) and a single helping of extra-strength ibuprofen, so I’m ready to hit cardio hip hop and yoga again tonight. Yoga is going to feel especially good.
The tally of classes last week was:
- Break x3
- House x3
- Cardio Hip Hop
- Yoga
- Hula Hoop
- Krumpking
Yes, that’s right, I did hula hooping and krumping in the same week, and yes, for the record, it WAS strange.
We all know what hula hooping looks like (skip ahead to about 35 seconds):
And then THIS is krumping (action at 35 seconds again):
Just a decade old, Krumping is a really new dance. It looks kind of erratic but it’s actually extremely controlled. Every movement is delivered with the commitment of a Judo punch. The legs are rooted much like in ballet, and the torso is completely isolated from the legs, but it doesn’t really feel like any other dance I’ve ever done, and even most dance teachers I’ve talked to can’t describe it without getting tongue-tied. You can see evidence of popping in it, here and there, and the occasional tinge of army boot camp. But other than that, it seems to have come from space, fully formed, and entirely unique. The music has roughly the spirit and energy of hip hop crossed with death metal. Oh, and you start and end a session with a primal scream, like you might imagine a football team doing. I had to do my scream twice, because the commitment in my scream was not believable the first time. You’re supposed to tap into the source of that scream at all times while Krumping. I may, in fact, be too silly to achieve this, but I’ll probably go back to the class, screaming barrier notwithstanding, just because it was a good class.
