Body Combat 42

Thursday 30th July - 7:40pm

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I didn't participate in the BA67 filming, though I did watch it and it looked like a great time. Nothing for me so far has topped the experience that was BA65 as far as Attack-ness goes, though it still looked like an awesome fun class.

After sitting around for an hour, my back and ankle settled down. They were troubling me throughout the Vive filming, but I thought I'd play it safe and go low impact for Combat.

Mr. Stollery, myself, and a bunch of others in the Les Mills Whanau (Whanau being the Maori word for 'Family') nestled into a corner down the back (and amazingly, Emma Barry somehow ended up right next to me?!) to rawk it up for the final filming of the day. Again, the front row was absolutely packed, so I was looking forward to being able to kick and punch to full extension without worrying about colliding with anyone, AND being able to be low impact without being concerned about getting in peoples way.

The presenting team this time around were Dan & Rach (of course), and Pernilla from Sweden and Angel from the USA. It doesn't show up in the photos as much, but Pernilla is an absolute hottie; so VERY beautiful, and has amazing Combat form. I was lucky enough to attend a class where it was taught by just her and Angel, and I loved watching her rip it up onstage.

[photo courtesy of PJ]

While I do like the Muay Thai inspired shorts that they all wore, I must admit, in my hungrified state, they reminded me of the wrappers on chocolate bars.

But thenagain, like I said, I was rather hungry! (Does add a new meaning to 'wearing tasty outfits'. Or was there ever only one meaning to that?)

I didn't attend the BC41 filming, but BC41 wasn't one of my favourite releases. It's taken a while to grow on me, and even now, it'll probably take a few more attempts at it from some very good instructors for me to enjoy it as much as I did BC40. BC42, however, I totally, thoroughly enjoyed. The first time I had the luxury of attending a rehearsal for it, I was scouring the internet for the specific remixes of the tracks they used since the music energised me so much.

Even with doing the class low impact, it was a hard, HARD workout. I was looking forward to being able to gobble food afterwards, since I didn't have any with me at the time (which is STOOPID), but not everyone was unorganised as me.

Fred, Jammer/Attacker/Stepper extrodinaire (I really need to think of a shorter nickname for him...) was around the back, and in between tracks when the team took a break to reset, while the rest of us grabbed our drink bottles, Fred held up a clear plastic bag full of almonds and said,

"Anyone want my nuts?"

That's not where it ended.

"Grab a handful of my nuts! My crunchy nutritious nuts!"

AHHHHHH OMFG Stop the Madness! Glen, who was next to me raised an eyebrow and said, "That's Fred, isn't it?" Heeeeee, yep, The Fred is famous, The Fred is legendary, he needs no introduction. All who encounter him will immediately know who he is. Anyone who comes up to me and says, "Who is this 'Fred' that everyone keeps talking about?'", I can say, "Trust me, when you see him, you'll know."

Emma Barry saw the almonds and said to him, "Wow, you're organised!", though as the Dodgy Nut Puns continued to come out of his mouth, she too was like OmfgWhatIsThisGuyOnAndWhereCanIGetSome. Imagine what the world would be like if we had some Instant Fred Potion where we could instantly Fredify ourselves.

...

Anyway!

The energy for this release was fantastic, and all of the presenters were great. There was a technical glitch in one of the tracks that had us standing around for a moment waiting while the filming production team sorted it out. Rach showed us how to do a burpee and said she wanted us to try and do as many as possible in a short space of time - a minute or 30 seconds or something like that. Right as she was about to get us started on that, the filming crew went, "Right we're sorted!" Rach was so disappointed, but everyone on the floor was incredibly relieved! Man, Adam made me do burpees and they're an absolute killer; I was already feeling shattered from Pump and Vive. You could see the expression of "Oh HELL NO" spread across peoples faces as Rach demonstrated the burpee. Thankfully the crowd got the second-to-last-laugh. (The last laugh comes later...!) Poor Rach though, she was so excited about getting everyone to do burpees at the same time.

All throughout the last few tracks I was hanging out for the end. During track 8, which Angel taught, I noticed that he started off some punches with the wrong hand, though the filming crew didn't stop the filming and reshoot it. "Hmm..." I thought, wondering if they had another camera angle with which they could swap out the footage for. We got through track 8, was absolutely buggered by it, then did our killer conditioning track and went KERSPLAT on the floor, almost passing out during the cooldown. Glen promptly buggered off, as did a lot of the Combatters on the floor, with it being a weeknight and it being quite late.

I too, was tempted to leave until I heard a voice from one of the filming crew saying, "Now we just need to go back and refilm that bit..."

I thought, "No way. NO. WAY. We've cooled down, people! WE'VE COOLED DOWN!!!"

The team had caught the slip up with Angel's punch and needed that part refilmed, so we reset from the end of track 7.

Dan and the team got into position like they'd just ended the track, and with equal intensity to the first time it was filmed, Dan exclaimed "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAOHH! That was an EPIC Muay Thai track!"

Then we got into the track, and would you believe it, there was ANOTHER mistake.

Reset, again.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAOHH! That was an EPIC Muay Thai track!"

Again, we got into the track, and again, would you believe it, there was YET ANOTHER mistake.

Reset, yet again.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAOHH! That was an EPIC Muay Thai track!"

We got into the track, and it all looked like it was going well. It seemed like we'd passed the spot that needed to be refilmed, so Dan stopped and said, "We got it? Yep, we got it. All good."

The music stopped, we hung around for a bit, and then... would you believe it, it turns out that we HADN'T gotten to the spot that needed to be refilmed.

We were told to reset again, and Dan said, "How about we just keep going until you guys say we're cool, yeah? ... But don't make us do the whole track!"

Into position once more.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAOHH! That was an EPIC Muay Thai track!"

And away we went, all trying our damned hardest to keep up the intensity. Though as time went on, and on, and on, and on we thought, "Oh my god they're not making us do the WHOLE track, surely?!?!!?" I was barely clinging on, pretty much giving as much energy as I had, waiting desperately for that call from the filming crew to signal that we were there.

That call never came. We went through the entire track another full time, and when I talked to Rach later about it, she said that the team onstage had no clue that they were going to do the full track either - they were barely hanging on too! What a bunch of troupers, they continued to rock it up despite it being so damn hard.

So after all of that, I'm almost obliged to say that BC42 is a bloody hard release - though I don't think in a regular Combat class you'd be made to do a hard track 8 four or five times, yeesh! Maybe my hardness perception of it is a little bit skewed after hearing of that ;-)

And yes, I was sore for DAYS.

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Next up...

Body Step 78