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There are two types of people in this world, the ones that like the challenge that doing fitness and being fit brings you and others (like me) who are ‘fitness challenged’.
When I arrived to Shanghai 9 months ago, I was in really bad shape (I’m sure you know the symptoms), luckily for me I met Julia Taylor (the original doll) who opposite to me really enjoys her daily doses of fitness. Long story short Julia had the great idea of starting a fitness program in the format of a ‘challenge’ to bring some of the Dolls together and help us to get in good shape for the summer.
The program is designed under the format that there are 2 competing teams (due to the location of the ‘challengers’ we had a JingAn and a Xujiahui teams) training twice a week at our local neighborhoods parks with a different trainer (10 people per team). After a period of 6 weeks both teams get together for a fun picnic day and to compete against each other (as a team) to declare a winning team of the Fitness Challenge. This fun event ends giving prices to the winning team (thanks to our generous sponsors). In addition because we truly believe that is not only important to win but also is important the effort you have put during the 6 weeks of training we gave awards to the people (in both teams) that showed the ‘most improvement’ since they started training. I’m proud to say that together with my friend Mirna we won the award for most improved for the JingAn team, I cannot tell you how much it means to a ‘fitness challenged’ person to get this kind of award. We also gave prizes in recognition to our team leaders because all the time they spent coordinating our teams, from scheduling to making sure we all got the materials we needed to work out. Our teams in addition to having the goal of getting in good shape, also had the goal of having a good time and laugh among friends that is why we decided to give the award to the laziest person in each team (by democratic vote), because you should never loose your sense of humor the winners of the ‘laziest’ person on each team received the prize of (1) one on one training session with our trainers.
I started the fitness challenge not because I was in bad shape, but because my friend Julia bugged me endlessly. If you have met her, she has a way to get you excited about things, so she got me excited about working out at 6 in the morning twice a week. Okay, not totally true I was not excited but at least I said: Okay, I will do it ;)
I’m not going to lie to you, the first day of ‘fitness school’ was rough, I kind of tried to cheat a little bit while running laps during the warm up portion (I got caught by our trainer) and I also got a little bit dizzy after running (yeah, that is when you know you are in bad shape). Anyway, I survived the first training session and the ‘longest hour’ of my life and as our trainer told us during the first session, the first two weeks are the toughest ones, after that it gets better (at the time I didn’t believe him). I can tell you now, that he was right, it gets really better especially because you start feeling stronger and stronger week after week.
The first fitness challenge ended in June 6th, with the challenge/ picnic @ Century Park, unfortunately my team (JingAn) did not capture the ‘Challenge’ award, the ladies from the other competing team (Xujiahui) did a fantastic job and they run like the wind or like one of my fellow teammates said like ‘horses’. We did a terrific job as well……….., we hope that for the next challenge (starting on July 12th) JingAn will capture this time the so deserved title.
The importance of team work was put to test during the fitness challenge sessions, when you work out by yourself is really easy to get lazy. I think it is easy to invent excuses to not go to the gym (I’m sure I have said all of them) but as part of a team it is different, when you don’t show up you feel you are letting down your team, besides the sessions only last 6 weeks at the time so when you loose a class basically you feel that is a lost opportunity.
Being a ‘fitness challenger’ left me with many things: it left me tons of sweat & tons of laughs with my team (trainees & trainer) and also with a very cool group of new friends. In addition it left me with (2) sizes less of clothing (yeah, this is a good one, isn’t it?). Okay, this was combined with a healthy food lifestyle in addition to the exercise but still the training helped me (and still helps me a lot); it also left me stronger and in better shape than I was before.
I think the most important thing I got out of the Challenge at a personal level, was a sense of pride, like Reese Witherspoon in “Legally Blonde“: WE DID IT!!!!
So no matter you fitness level or fitness goals, come and join us for our next fitness session starting on July 12th．We will be having 2 teams for each location (JingAn & Xujiahui)，morning and evening sessions．We will also be having a Pudong team for the ladies that live ‘on the other side’.
If you join one of the JingAn teams (morning or evening session), I will be in your team. Call me crazy but I have decided to do a ‘double’ challenge (to myself), so I will be training with two different teams each week. Remember, if a totally ‘fitness challenged’ girl like me can do this, you can do it too. I promise you it will be tough, I promise you it will be sweaty but most important, it will be FUN and you won’t regret it.
Like one of our trainers always says (when we complain that we are too tired to do this or that): JUST DOooooo IT!!!!
P.S. Feel free to PM me @ FlorG for more questions about my experience as a ‘challenger’. For additional questions about time, location, prices & schedule for next challenge session, please contact Julia or Elena.
Comments
Hope to see some new faces when the next challenge starts, it really is fun working out with other Dolls.