Veronica Boulden

I attended my first Les Mills Super Quarterly yesterday at Gold's Gym in Newburgh, New York.  I did Bodypump, Bodystep, Bodycombat, Bodyflow, Body Attack, and Sha'Bam, in that order. The gym where I work has only two programs Bodypump and Bodycombat, so yesterday was my first experience with all the other formats.  I started the day with Bodypump.  One of the trainers was Ben Feliciano.  He was one of the instructors on the Beachbody Pump DVDs I did at home for so many months on my weight loss journey, so that made it surreal.   Next, I did Bodystep.  I thought that it would be easier for me since I have been teaching free style step aerobics for a while, but it was really challenging, but fun.  I had the opportunity to do CXWork right after Bodystep and I really wanted to, but I couldn't.  I was shaky and desperately needed fuel at that point. I ate and drank something quickly and watched most of CXWorx from the balcony above. When I have another opportunity in

I just attended and passed Bodycombat Initial Training last weekend. Read more about that here . This week, I got to team teach with my mentor. We took the photo above after class. It was my first Bodycombat teaching experience with a live class. I taught the two tracks I presented at training.   I made one big, stupid mistake while teaching the tracks to that live class. I called double hooks double uppers. I was doing hooks, so people were still able to follow me well, but I was calling them the wrong thing and apparently, I did that the entire time.  *Face palm. When I was really new to Bodypump, I remember that I was mixing up the terms then, too. For a while, I called extensions presses and deadlifts deadrows. Now that I have been teaching Bodypump for a few months, I don't do that sort of thing anymore. So I can hope with time, I will eventually work out all those kinds of kinks as I get more experience with Bodycombat, too. I will be team teaching

  I passed Bodycombat Initial Training! This is just the very first step toward becoming certified to teach Bodycombat classes. And, for me, certification will just be the first step toward becoming a good Bodycombat coach.    I have never done any martial arts before and I had only ever taken two live Bodycombat classes before training. I was just doing my best to imitate what I saw the presenters doing on the video and what my mentor was doing in class. Bodycombat puts a lot of emphasis on proper technique. I have taught freestyle kickboxing classes for a long time, but now that I see how different those classes are from Bodycombat, I don't even consider that experience very relevant to what's ahead of me. The freestyle kickboxing classes conditioned my body, but I will need an entirely new skill level to do Bodycombat as well as I want to. I knew nothing about martial arts, so Bodycombat training was like an introduction to martial arts for me. Our trainer de

Dan and Breeze Foster came to visit. They have five kids, so in addition to our three, our house was bursting with life over the weekend. We really cherish our friendship with the Fosters.  Our parents were friends before us.  Dan and Dwayne grew up together, literally from birth, so we think it is exciting that we get to continue building our friendship and now begin to see our kids making memories. It rained a lot of Saturday and it was chilly, so there wasn't much else to do.  While the kids played around the house, we spent a lot of time just sitting around talking about all sorts of things, one topic led to another.  But conversation with the Fosters is never lacking, so the time just flew.       After church and lunch on Sunday, we all went up to Holy Land.  The autumn views over the city of Waterbury are beautiful.  Holy Land is an interesting place with an interesting history that you can read about here and here .  As we continue to make Waterbury our home, H

The gym where I teach Bodypump needs another Bodycombat instructor, so I have decided to sign up for Bodycombat training in hopes of getting my certification. I was planning to get another Les Mills certification eventually, maybe even two more certifications. I just wasn't sure which ones I would do. And I definitely wasn't planning to do any of them this soon. However, with the chance to start teaching classes,  I am motivated to go ahead. The training is in less than two weeks, so if I do well, I can start helping my gym with classes sooner rather than later. I'll be assessed on Bodycombat 61, tracks 2 and 8. I have a lot of experience teaching various kinds of group fitness classes including Bodypump.  I even have a lot of experience teaching freestyle cardio kickboxing classes.  But I have hardly any experience in Bodycombat. In fact, I've only ever done one Combat DVD I got from Beachbody with their Pump DVDs. I've done that one Combat DVD a lot of

Like I said on a previous post, life is really busy for us right now. But life is also really enjoyable when I am in the right frame of mind to see that. Yesterday, I volunteered in my church's preschool class. At first, it felt like teaching the little kids at church was just going to be one more thing I had to do this weekend. But then I felt God's Spirit put a picture in my head and say something to my heart about it. I saw myself with my arms of full of various things, all good things, but my arms were really full and I was struggling to keep a hold of everything. Then God was holding something else out for me to take and the idea of taking hold of anything else would mean I would have to stop and to rearrange everything in my arms. I would be lucky not to drop anything.  I saw myself hesitate and resist taking the next thing that God was offering me. Then I saw myself concede, shift things around, and offer out an empty hand. He's God. I am compelled to