Winding Down

After teaching aerobics for 11 1/2 years, I am getting ready to wind down my teaching career. Back when I first started teaching I was pretty fresh out of school, unattached, just started working full time. The world was my oyster, and I got to call all the shots. But now, after the birth of my second child, it is obvious that there are much more important things to do than teaching nine classes before and after work, and on weekends.

10 things about me as an instructor

Teaching Step Aerobics and What a Strange Trip it's Been...

• 41. Never in my dreams did I think I would be teaching aerobics.
• 42. First it was just looking for a class to take at the gym during lunch, then I got better at the class (Step), then they couldn't find instructors to teach at noon, then...
• 43. The gym manager joked and asked me "So when are you gonna teach?" I said, "moi?"
• 44. I was never someone who would say no before trying anything. Plus the fringe benefit of getting paid for working out - how cool is that?
• 45. The last time I could not fall asleep all night was the night before my first class.
• 46. Thought I would suck and it will be over with in two weeks. That was 1993. I am still teaching.
• 47. Most class taught in a day: 4. Different Ballys clubs taught: 15. Earliest class: 5:45 a.m. Latest class: 11 p.m. Biggest class: 95 people. Smallest: 2.
• 48. Total number of classes taught since 11/16/1993: probably over 3,500
• 49. At the current level of my classes, I call a 4-beat move every 1.6 seconds, or 38 moves per minute.
• 50. I get paid less than a newhire. Go figure.

Broadcast

Power 106 is doing a promotion at my club and I was asked to teach there at that time. This will be the second time my class make it onto a broadcast media. Eight years ago my class made it on the NBC Nightly News.

Sat 1/1/05 9:30a Culver City

Alright, so I didn't really expect a whole lot of people to show bright and early on New Year's Day, but we had a decent turn out - between 45 and 50 people. I polled the class - quite a few people showed up with hangovers.

The class was fun. We went all out with the choreography because there were no new people. I could zone out when I cue because I didn't have to keep an eye on anybody, I could just concentrate on making it fun. Like the Rocker-Hopper-Chopper Combo.

New people are showing up the last couple of days (1/3 - today 1/4) so choreography is simplified to at least give the rookies a fighting chance to learn the class. I'm interested to see who makes it this year.

Tapes: 35A/39B/1A

Thu 12/30/04 5:30p Macy's

So this was the last class of 2004, and I promised everybody "the hardest class of the year", since next week when all the people back plus a bunch of new people wandering in I'd have to go back to a somewhat more basic choreography.

The poeple who showed up yesterday, needless to say, were diehard regulars mostly. Even though there weren't the usual 60+ people, we had about 40-45 GOOD people, which made it even more fun to teach, mainly because I didn't have to watch everyboody as much and could just concentrating on calling. I had a lot of energy, surprisingly, and it went through everybody.

A kick ass class.

Happy New Year, everybody.

Tapes: 35A/8B/1A

Wed 12/29/04 6:30p Culver CIty (2x2 Multi-Step)

The 2x2 format was something I developed a few years ago when I actually had an official Multi-Step class. I was getting pretty creative and came up with some out-of-this-world routines and formations - we did not only 2x2 (moving between two boards fromt and back, and two boards side by side), but also 3x3, 4-square (four boards line up like a box), Zig-zag (L-shape that goes continuously), Triangle, Partners (2 people sharing two boards), Chorus Line (People move continuous up or down a line of boards) and Circles (boards line up like the minute marks on a clock, all the way around in a circle).

Since I don't do routines in my class - I think they are quite boring and offers no intellectual challenge - I had to come up with an efficient way to call out the step moves and board switches (if any). What came out were, like my single-board class, commands that begins with the "switch" then the "move". With every switch-move at four beats most of the time, I was calling a new switch-move about every 1.5 seconds. That's a lot of talking.

Yesterday was the last 2x2 class for the year, and maybe forever. I taught the diagonal switches plus the "side-diagonal-side" switch. My class was such a skilled group that we only had maybe about two or three "pile-ups" and almost everybody had no problem picking up the new switches.

Maybe one of these days if I ever go on the show circuit like Izett does I can show off my 2x2 class. But for now it shall remain undiscovered.

More Advice to New Instructor

New Instructor was talking to me yesterday, about choreography and the schedule of implementation, etc. My first question to her was - what happens if she gets a class full of people who have never done her class before, which, for a new instructor like her, is a distinct possibility.

I told her that, from my experience, to build a class from nothing, she needs to meet two goals:

1. Give the members a good workout - after all, that's what they are there for, and if they get a good exercise session, they wouldn't feel that their time was wasted.
2. Instructor needs to connect with the class - the commands need to be strong and effective, there needs to have an energy exchange between the instructor and the members, and the instructor needs to send it out first. No energy? Dead class.

It was never about the choreography.

Advice

I was talking to a new instructor yesterday - telling him how he has to find inspiration on his own when he teaches. A lot of new instructors get inspired only when they see a big group of people and/or certain advanced and energetic members. Most of them don't realize how long it takes to accumulate the good and devoted regulars that make the classes the way they are.

I have taught my share of lame classes. Classes that started with five people who had no idea how to do anything. So I'd try my hardest to teach the few people I had and made a good class out of it, and thought that we would go from there. Wrong. The next week five different people showed up.

Attitude counts for a lot when it comes to teaching. The class floats and sinks on the instructor's attitude. That's all there is. I could have a bad day at work but if I tried not to let it get to me, then nobody in the class will know and the class will be just fine. In my more disciplined days of teaching years ago, the positive attitude carried me through many tough classes.