Lockdown Reviews: The 80s Workout!

 

Hobbies like strength training, body-building and powerlifting are all but extremely hard to do in a pandemic. I have to admit, my heart sunk a little when the gyms officially closed and I could not longer feel that golden pump.

My current routine is based on keeping that muscle mass and, boy: it's kinda boring at this point. A lack of motivation leeds me to feel drained and uninterested in fitness. After a month in lockdown, and one more to go, I have quickly ditched all online training programs promising abs in '10 minutes', and stumbled upon something that genuinely excited me. 

Yes, an 80s fat-burning workout. On first glance, I only took this in as a meme or joke that I could share. I would never have done anything like this, but the video calls back some sort of nostalgia I was never part of, which left me feeling happy whilst sitting in a pandemic. I began to imagine stay-at-home mums in America doused in sweat after dropping off the kids whilst copying this video. 

I soon became captivated, and so gave it a go.

The results:

The best thing I can say about this experience is that is was FUN.

In the first 5 minutes, I still treated the video like some sort of joke and felt embarassed, and somewhat awkward when performing the actions, even if I was alone. After 10 minutes, a freeing feeling came over me as the endorphins kicked in: I felt a little bit like a child again. 

It was a feeling comparable to how a child would run around in the playground, not really caring where their arms flare about or how they look silly to adults. 

After a while, my arms began to ache and some of the performative dance-style actions became increasingly hard, as if I was being worn out. It's a feeling much different from running in a straight line. The energetic and excited dancers, the bright music, the smiling and cheering gave a happy environment to express my own body, and encouragement from Kathy Smith herself jogged me on when things got a little tough.

The hour flew by.

After 40 minutes of low impact cardio, a short cool-down and stretching segment occured, making me feel settled and ready to hit the shower. 

Would I recommend it?

All in all, I give this experience a lockdown 9/10. why? Some of the movements felt quite difficult and fast to keep up with, and because of the old recording equipment, I felt the audio didn't totally match up totally with the picture, leading to a bit of confusion. I would say that a lot of people will feel awkward and under-confident at the theatrical and dance aspect of the show, too.

 In terms of fat loss, I don't want to comment since I have only given it a go once. However, my face turned red like a tomato, and I was out definitely feeling the burn after a while! I would say this is a great alternative for going out for a long walk, with many positive benefits, like fat burning. It was far different to newer workouts that offer 'abs in 5 minutes' or 'fat bum in 2 minutes workout'. In today's world, everything seems to be catered around being fast and gaining all the results now. Therefore, it was pleasant to experience the slowness of exercise, and the comment afterwards from Kathy that the aim should be health, now how you look. After all, in a world run by Instagram likes, how nice is it to not focus on how our future bodies will look like on social media? By the end of the video, I wasn't concentrating on how I would look to others, I was simply in the moment, having a good time.

I would definitely recommend this if you're in lockdown, hate boring, repetative exercise and want something fun to do! I will certainly give more videos like this a try.

Elise x