Bodywork Fitness Column

Mar 1 2013 by Lorraine Howard, Irvine Herald

It’s almost March and that is great because that’s when spring starts with its light nights.

It’s great to work when the sun is still in the sky.

Last week I ran a Cardio40 session for staff at Castlepark Community Nursery and the class went great, they all enjoyed it and by the end of the 40 minutes they all seemed energised and ready to get on with the rest of their day.

As an instructor you can fall into the trap of delivering your class every week to your loyal group of clients who love what you do but I feel the true worth of a session is proven when you have to deliver your session to a group of people who are not exercise fans.

When I began teaching - and don’t all gasp in amazement here - I was using tape cassettes for the music.

I have always been a member of Pure Energy music group, Europe’s biggest supplier of music for exercise classes and I eagerly remember receiving the brown envelope every month with the new releases on them.

I have vivid memories of fast forwarding the tape to the point where I wanted it to start.

There really was no way of knowing where to start the tape, it was all trial and error. Fast forward, press play and listen to where you were then try and work it out from there.

I got really good at timing where the track of music I was looking for would start. It’s a whole new ball game now thanks to iPods and playlists and laptops and docking stations.

Thanks to modern sound systems in sports centres and gyms, often I can just turn up at a venue with an iPod the size of a box of matches and plug it in for wall to wall music.

I remember in the days before I drove, I would have to get on the bus laden with all these different bags and hope the bus wouldn’t make too many stops on the way to work.

Arriving at work I would then see the other instructors all with their baggage waiting to start their classes.

If we had time between classes in a centre we would jump in and out of each others sessions in case we ever had to cover someone else’s class. It was brilliant fun.

There was a real sense of cameraderie and during that time and I learned that working as an instructor was no glamorous vocation but a hard slog that required strength of character and unstoppable resolve.

To all you instructors that brought fitness to Ayrshire at a time when it was neither in vogue or an easy option, I salute you, all of you who introduced aerobics, step and body toning to the masses, stand tall.

Without you there would be no industry to speak of today.