Forward back,
one-two-three. One, two, cha-cha-cha.
One, two, lift it!
I’m a workout video junkie—I love classes at gyms, but in
the absence of a gym membership or a conveniently timed session, I love doing
workouts at home. I’ve done P90X
about four times over, did Insanity last summer, and started doing Brazilian
Butt Lift with my roommate who owns the series on DVD. It might not have been the first things
I would’ve chosen, but it’s a tough workout that (obviously) focuses on butt
exercises.
One, two, three, and
burst out! Explode!
For some reason, two things were running through my mind as
we were doing the DVD last time.
The first is more obvious: I felt pretty strongly that if this workout
couldn’t give me an actual butt, nothing could. It was even good enough that maybe I wouldn’t get teased
every time that my mom and sister walked behind me about my non-existent
butt. The other thing is
less obvious: I was thinking about Kathy Smith. Specifically Kathy Smith’s Fat Burning Workout.
If I am a workout video junkie, it directly stems from the
first VHS that I can remember doing, or watching my mom do. It was Kathy Smith’s 45 minute aerobic
fat-burning workout. Maybe you’ve
seen your mom do it, or you’ve done it yourself. It’s the one in which, in classic 1980s style, Kathy is
wearing a leotard of turquoise and hot pink with matching purple leggings and
slouchy pink sweat socks. But the
more I think about it, the outfits might be the main difference in the
workouts. (If you’re not quite
sure you’ve ever seen it, start this YouTube at exactly 3 hours to see it in
its entirety http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlXXOqyku48 )!
Low, low, low, and
reach, now level change.
Brazilian Butt Lift is tough, and certainly focuses on the
butt more than Kathy does—hers is a more whole body workout. But the same underlying count for the
exercises remains in place in both.
Both Leandro of BBL and Kathy use the same eight counts that every
workout and choreographed dance song uses. Both use the same basic body weight exercises of lunges,
squats, and plies to work muscle groups.
Both focus on repeating exercises until you want to rip that body part
off, and both are so unbelievably cheerful about this workout that you wonder
how many times you’ll have to do it before you can smile through that last set
of leg pulses.
Twos in each
direction, yeah, yeah, yeah.
P90X might be my most intensely loved workout, but Kathy
Smith was first and greatest. Not
because her workout was the best (although all things considered, it’s pretty
great), but because I’ve watched that VHS tape so many times. Case in point:
all the quotes throughout here, which have all come from her workout without
even having to rewatch it—they’re simply a part of my internal workout monologue. When I lived in Strasburg during my
first year teaching, there was no gym anywhere nearby and I lived alone. My TV just happened to have a built in
VCR and armed with tapes I borrowed from my parents’ house, it was Kathy that
kept me company after I’d finish my lesson planning as I sweated along with her
many nights.
Lift tall, tall, tall,
down. Whoo. Whoo.
I’m not planning to go back to Kathy Smith’s Fat Burning
Workout, mostly though because there’s only one of them rather than five to
rotate through like Leandro’s Brazilian plan. Sure there are some differences—like most of Leandro’s girls
are wearing black shorts rather than shiny, bright spandex leggings. But after finding Kathy Smith on
YouTube I couldn’t help but realize, that maybe the biggest difference is that
she does basically the entire workout with her crew. Something I haven’t really seen from anyone since.
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