Death to Burpees!

Any training plan will tell you that cross training is an important and necessary part of your running plan. Its a great way to get a burn and work on muscles that might not get as much of a workout on a normal run. And strengthening these parts of your body can help you improve your running performance. As well, cross training can also just be a nice break from running, which, especially if you are stuck running the same routes all the time, can be a nice change. There are all types of cross training. Some people bike. Some swim. Some just do the elliptical at the gym. I found my perfect cross training about 6 months ago. For a number of years I’ve been interested in taking some kind of boxing or self defense class. I thought it would make me feel powerful and in control. In late January, after numerous times of searching the web for classes in the Philadelphia area (and numerous times of finding a place and then chickening out on actually signing up for anything) I finally emailed a guy and the next Saturday morning dragged Mike up to Manayunk for our very first class. And as if getting up the courage just to email wasn’t enough, I almost didn’t even go in (and probably wouldn’t have if Mike weren’t there). One hour later I emerged elated from Joltin' Jabs, my hands shaking so badly I couldn’t even sign my name up on the calendar to attend the same class the next week. Shaking badly because I had just pummeled them into a heavy bag repeatedly over the course of an hour.

"I will make you cry"

Joltin Jabs is a brilliant place and its exactly what I was looking for. Its actual, hard core boxing with an actual pro boxer - Joltin’ Joey DeMalavez. He only takes a max of 10 people at a time, giving you lots of one-on-one attention during the 55 minute class. After you’ve had a few classes of basic intro to different punches you start up a rotation that soon becomes familiar: speed bad, double end bag, heavy bag, jump rope, upper cut bag. Two rounds of 3 minutes each at each station. Interspersed by more push ups, crunches, bear crawls, and “what the f*ck” exercises to destroy you. No doubt about it, Joltin’ Joey will kick your ass. And I promise you will love every second of it. It only took two classes for Mike and I to rush to City Sports and pick up our own gloves and wraps. Its cardio. Its strength building. Its fast paced. I fell into yoga about a year ago and stuck with it for about 6 months. Since I started with Joey I can barely stand to go to a yoga class (only if its summer, its outside, and its free). Its just not a workout unless a tattooed, muscle armed, shaved headed boxer is yelling the F-word five inches from my face while I am dripping sweat and the rocky theme song (yes he does occasionally play this; it’s Philly for goodness sake!) is turned all the way up on the speakers.

So yes, this is my perfect cross training and Mike and I go at least once a week. It’s the best ‘gym type’ membership/package I’ve ever invested in and it supplements my running so perfectly. Not to mention if I have a particularly stressful week I can rip the upper cut bag to shreds or punch the heavy bag until my hands bleed (which they often do; I’m not paying all that money to punch like a baby!).
Mostly, I enjoy every part of his class. EXCEPT the dreaded burpees. This particular exercise irks me tremendously. It’s a combination of two things I hate: getting up from an on-the-ground position and jumping in the air. I hate getting up. Once I am in a horizontal position you may as well just leave me there. In yoga I used to curse the instructor under my breath when she told us to sit up from savasana. Its funny because I’m happy to run 10 miles no problem, but ask me to get up off of the floor if I’m laying down and I will be the laziest person ever. Maybe its that I immediately want to regress to a relaxed, sleepy state and being forced out of that is extremely uncomfortable. This probably sounds really strange and I’m probably not explaining it quite effectively enough, but anyway the point is that I hate burpees! Everytime I stagger up and jump in the air I feel like I'm Atlas trying to raise the world on my shoulders and then only half a second later I am plummeting back down to earth into a push up position. Repeat for 30 seconds. Seriously, give me 1000 crunches instead.

I was so infuriated by the existence of this exercise after class the other day that I actually looked up its origins (so that maybe my dissatisfaction could be better directed). Turns out this ridiculous form of torture has existed since the 1930s and was invented by an American psychologist named (drum roll please...) Royal H. Burpee! Apparently he developed the test to measure agility and coordination. If he could see me today performing his exercise he would write a big fat ‘NONE’ in his logbook. But...I’m not one to give up, so I’ll keep doing them every week and I’ll keep looking silly, but hey, at least I’m doing them!