Firefly Music Festival - Just hear me out (June 20, 2015)

The news is constantly highlighting the obesity epidemic in the United States, which is incredibly unfortunate.  However, I have noticed that there aren't a lot of overweight hippies or hipsters.  Given that I would assume the former always has the munchies and the latter is always trying restaurants in Brooklyn, I was confused by my observation.  However, post-Firefly, I have a theory - music festivals provide a huge calorie burn.  At first glance, a music festival does not seem like it would provide an intense workout, but it does. Standing. Walking. Dancing. This weird game that involved running circles around a pile of different hats until the music paused (obviously, a hipster contribution).  You burn a ton of calories at music festivals!

I am neither a hippie nor a hipster.  I look terrible in tie dye and my glasses are prescription, not ironic.  That said, I do love great live music, which I believe is a love I share with most living, breathing humans.  I love the shared experience of music.  People from all different walks of life singing the same song  in unison. For example, when Paul McCartney performed "Hey Jude," at Firefly this year, tens of thousands of people of all ages and all walks of life were singing and holding up lighters together.  That kind of shared experience doesn't happen on a daily basis.  Someone also pointed out to me that no live music performance is exactly the same, so you and a group of people are experiencing a one-time event together, much like seeing a cloud (okay... perhaps I have a little hippie in me).

Sara Cuesta, whose awesomeness I have mentioned in a few of my posts (she is the lovely blond right next to me in the first picture), is an incredibly energetic music junkie.  She knows everything about music, so she was leading the charge for Firefly.   We drove to Delaware Thursday night. I should mention that Sara and I went to neighboring high schools in Delaware long before there was anything remotely cool to do within a 20 mile radius.  Like most Delawareans, we believe it is our duty to attend Firefly since it is finally something awesome to do in our hometown.  Sara mapped out all the bands that we should see.  Firefly is held on a huge compound, 154 acres, and many of the acts overlapped or were timed back to back, so we would have to hustle quite a distance from show to show.

Now, according to the internet, standing for 8 hours burns roughly 600 calories (see this nifty link https://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/cbc).  This doesn't include all of the dancing, jamming and scurrying from band to band that you will do.  This explains how the above-mentioned hippies and hipsters can stuff their faces and still fit into their skinny jeans and look flawless in their half shirts.

The Friday shows were fantastic, but I definitely was the biggest fan of the Paul McCartney show, which came as a total shock to myself.  He is not my generation, but there was something incredibly cool about his performance and how it captivated everyone.  On Saturday evening, a huge storm rolled in requiring evacuation!  You can see the ominous colored sky in the background of the picture of myself, Erin and Sara.  Again, more calories being burned walking/running to shelter.

Luckily, like a truly mature 31-year-old woman, I called my mom and she picked me up from the concert venue and rescued me from the storm. #adulthood.

I couldn't stick around for Sunday's events, which  bummed me out, but I had to get home to prepare for work the following week.  Sara and Erin stayed to continue the "workout."  Erin reported that walking in the mud the following day was probably also a very good butt workout.

My necessary return to work brings me to the next mystery that I would like to solve.  How do people constantly go to music festivals?  I ask this because I assume that I have solved the mystery of slender hippies and hipsters.  Feel free to call me Nancy Drew moving forward.


 Most of the people you chat with at Firefly are also attending Bonaroo, Lollapalooza, etc. They just follow the music festival circuit.  I want to ask them what they do for a living?  You look like you are (barely) old enough to work.  Do you just have the coolest job in the world that lets you follow the music festival circuit?  You must get paid an awful lot for taking time off because three-day passes, plus your travel expenses, probably cost as much as a car insurance payment. Additionally, you had to purchase festie gear, and unless you robbed an Anthropoligie at the beginning of the summer that has also set you back.  I suppose I may never solve the second mystery, but it gives me food for thought.

Please, go to a music festival at least once.  Eat terrible food (like cookie ice-cream sandwiches).  Dance, stand and run around.  Enjoy the fabulous shared experience and the calorie burn!

Zengo Cycle - More "Go" than "Zen" but awesome regardless (June 9, 2015)

Zengo is described online as "a full-body, cycle-centric workout for your body and mind that will Rock Your Day."  http://www.zengocycle.com/about

Admittedly, I have no interest in giving my mind a workout in my spare time.  My mind gets enough exercise at my place of work and received more than enough workouts during my years of education.  That said, I had heard nothing but great things about Zengo, and it was available through Classpass...so there was no way I wasn't going to give it a try.

Though I rarely say this, the studio lived up to its glowing reputation.

I first attended Zengo on Memorial Day, but I quickly became a repeat customer because I got a great workout!

The class is 50 minutes of cycling with a few minutes of light weightlifting done around 30 minutes into class.  The weightlifting consists of roughly five minutes (a song's length of time) doing biceps curls, shoulder raises, etc. with two to five pound weights.  Essentially, Zengo's class structure is very similar to SoulCycle and some of the other cycling studios.  Zengo is by no means reinventing the wheel, but they do a great job.  You start off the class cycling and usually doing some push-ups on the bike while you cycle. Throughout the class you are encouraged to "dance" on your bike...as much as one can dance while cycling on a stationary bike (basically - bounce from side to side while biking).

The music is fantastic.  They play a lot of upbeat DJ remixes.  If you know the DJ Girl Talk, the tracks played remind me of his mashups.  If you have never heard Girl Talk, I highly recommend listening.

On Memorial Day, the mashups were patriotic.  Picture a blend of Billy Joel and Bruce Springstein that make you want to start dancing and chanting USA.  Since then, the music has been the more traditional exercise fare - a cocktail of rock, hip-hop and pop blends.  The music is always loud enough to get you pumped, but never deafening.

The instructor I had on Memorial Day, who I have had a few times now, remains my absolute favorite.  I am pretty sure her name is Kelsey.  I suspected she would be great when I walked in on Memorial Day and in addition to the America-themed soundtrack, she was dressed like she was about to star in a 1980s patriotic music video.  She had an incredible amount of energy - an adrenaline rush to rival Jesse Spano on caffeine pills.  Ironically, she looks just like a girl I went to high school with who always seemed stoned.

Now that I've taken a few classes, I realize that there must be a high energy requirement in the secret Zengo training manual.  Periodically, the instructor (every one that I have had so far) gets off of the instructor bike up front to dance and hop back and forth across the room to get you pumped up.  To my surprise, this is an effective tactic.  It is a skill to hop up and down in someone's face and not annoy them. Kudos to the Zengo instructors who have mastered that art.

Now, as far as I can tell, the "Zen" portion is one song in the middle of class where the lights go off and you are instructed to close your eyes, focus on the intention you have set for the class, cycle your little heart out, and find your Zen.  The first time I was instructed to Zen (?) I believe it was to Katy Perry's Firework...because Katy Perry is synonymous with Zen?  I would have assumed Enya would be the Zen soundtrack of choice.

Although I am not one to set an intention, I do think about what one of the instructors recently said.  She instructed the class to be thankful to for having the physical capability, the spare time, and the financial means to be in the class, which is something that I think we all take for granted.  When we go somewhere to workout, it means we have the time, the money and the physical capability, which is pretty special.  I think that everyone should be particularly grateful for any way they are able to exercise and don't have permanent injuries or other ailments that restrict their workout, or totally preclude them from working out.

The studio is very relaxing.  Unlike SoulCycle, there aren't a ton of flashing lights - just a large, dark room with the instructor's bike lit under overhead lighting.  During Zen, the lights go off, and you just see some small blue lights on the floor.  Soothing.  See the lovely Google image of the studio to the left.  The atmosphere is very nice.  The people are pleasant and the studios adds nice touches like offering you a pad for your seat in case you are prone to getting sore while riding.

I enjoy Zengo.  It is one of those studios that I have come across using Classpass that makes me wish there wasn't a three class per month restriction on the pass.  The instructors are great.  I will say that Classpass puts you automatically on bikes, and in Zengo, those bikes happen to be on the side of the instructor's bike, so you can tell when the instructor is fake turning the resistance knob on their bike.  As far as I can tell, my favorite instructor never fakes it - as mentioned, she is a rock star.

Added bonus - I go to Zengo Cycle in Mosaic, which is a cute little town center in northern Virginia.  Across from the studio is a bakery, Pastry Xspo, that serves probably my favorite cupcakes in northern Virgnia (not to be confused with Baked & Wired, which serves my favorite cupcakes in DC).  I am not sure if fitness studios and bakeries are in cahoots, or if I subconsciously select workout studios located next to bakeries.  Either way, I consider the bakery an added bonus.  My post-Zengo spin usually ends with a cupcake (try the strawberry with white chocolate frosting).

The first class at Zengo is free, so there's no excuse not to try it out!

U-Jam - U-don't without shoes (June 5, 2015)

I am terrible at packing a gym bag.  Really, I am terrible at packing any bag. I notoriously under pack, which doesn't bother me, but sometimes results in me wearing the same thing for a few days and almost always asking a hotel for a toothbrush.  For example - I did 8 days in Europe...in the winter...with a carry-on bag (I wore that outfit to the right almost the entire time).  This lifestyle seems totally reasonable to me - probably because my mother never packs anything.  She is like MacGyver.  She just throws random objects into a bag and survives for days (though usually her keys fail to make it into said bag).

With that preface, as you can imagine, I often forget to pack staple items in my gym bag.  This is annoying, but I can purchase the occasional hair tie.  I have even purchased a sports bra from a workout studio, which I hated because as a small-chested woman I am particular about my sports bras (buxom women are probably also particular, but I do not know that burden).   Anyhow, I digress.

The night that I was supposed to take U-Jam, I forgot shoes.  Unfortunately, shoes are too expensive to purchase on a whim if forgotten, and even if they were cheap, I have never seen them for sale in a gym.  It was Friday after work, and I knew that if I went home there was going to be no working out, so I made the executive decision that U-Jam was not a workout that required shoes (I based this confident decision on nothing).

U-Jam is described online as an "intense cardiovascular workout [that] takes you around the world from hip-hop to Bollywood as you dance and move to high-energy music."  I figured that U-Jam was probably a typical dance class, and I could dance without shoes.  People do it all the time at weddings, right?

I wandered barefoot through the gym (which I am sure was incredibly unsanitary) and up to the group fitness studio.

I notice there were a ton of gentlemen in the class, which was a little unusual.  In my experience, you don't see a ton of men in those types of aerobic dance classes.  Then the instructor walked in, and I suddenly understood the unique class demographic.  She was gorgeous and wearing well-painted in spandex.  The dots instantly connected, and I wondered if she had any idea that her fan base might not be focusing on the calorie burn or the beats.

I decided that I should let hot stuff know my situation instead of just looking like a barefoot random in the back of the exercise room.  I walked up to her and said, "I forgot my shoes.  Can I take this class barefoot?"  In hindsight, that was probably a weirder question than I realized at the time.  The instructor just looked at me a little surprised and goes, "No.  Probably not...but you are welcome to stay?"  That is not a typographical error.  Her response was said with a questioning tone. Understandable.
Well, I was not prepared for her response.  I was prepared for, "yes, of course you can workout and pioneer the new concept of barefoot U-Jam." I was delusional because I was determined to workout.  Fortunately for me, the instructor technically gave me the "welcome to stay," so in a truly awkward fashion that is exactly what I did.


The class started.  I thought to myself "this isn't so bad."  The moves were pretty low impact.  Traditional dance moves, a little Zumba-ish, and a little air grinding (the instructor's fan club was extremely happy).  Then, the instructor added the jumping.  I guess that was part of our rhythmic world journey? They incorporate jumping into a lot of the dancing in other countries...and in our American hip-hop.  As a non-dancer, I was unaware of all the hopping involved in choreography. The jumping is where things quickly deteriorated for this shoe-less idiot.

I lasted a total of 35 minutes into the one-hour class because the lack of ankle support and jumping made me think my Achilles were going to snap.  The workout seemed like it would be great.  I was expecting it to be a knockoff of Zumba, or some other dance class, but it really had its own feel and the music was awesome.  Please, please, check it out if it is something that your gym offers.  Just remember to wear shoes.  I will definitely give it another shot...next time I will bring proper footwear (and probably forget a shirt).

Kudos to the instructor for great music, what seemed to be a great workout, and a high tolerance for both the awkward, barefoot attendees and the creepy, oogling attendees.

Note - I didn't have any pictures of this class, so I just Goolged "awesome shoes" and have sprinkled images that came up for your viewing pleasure.