The benefits of cross-training

Day 130 of practice.

I practiced during the day! For a while now I've wanted to take the time that I used to go to the gym (12:30-1:30) as my dance practice time. I wouldn't have to worry about being too tired, or about having had a large dinner and feeling too bloated to dance. But while the cooler was malfunctioning, it was simply too unbearably hot to do any sort of anything until about 10pm or later.

As part of this hour or so of practice, I also want to get back into working out. You see, I spent over a year going to a CrossFit gym in my neighborhood, where I got accustomed to doing really hardcore workouts -- running, rowing, Olympic lifting, pushups, sits-ups, squats, etc etc. I got into great shape but I was also too tired to get quality dance practice, and I was frequently covered in bruises (I bruise really easily!) and nursing sore muscles. Plus the membership fees were crazy expensive, so I decided to drop out and focus on dance. But I've been losing a lot of the great muscle tone I had, so I want to get back to at least doing some fitness stuff at home to supplement my belly dance and keep me in shape. I may also pick up some yoga classes or something to further my cross-training goals, but I don't know.

Anyway, my husband decided he liked my idea of practicing/working out in our old CrossFit time slot, so he decided to invite me on a jog. Even at my peak adult fitness I was horrible at running, but I decided to go with him anyway. We probably jogged about 400 meters and walked the rest of the block and it kicked my butt! I decided not to do any skirt practice because I didn't want to get all that gross sweat in my nice skirt :P

For the dancing part of my practice I did my layered shimmy practice, some glute squeezes and lower ab isolations, random bits of dancing to music that came on while I was doing things and inspired me, and then I decided to go back to my "one random song a day" exercise. "Come Tenderness" by Lisa Gerrard was what the iPod gave me. The song is really, really minimalist, the sort of thing I would never want to perform to. I used it as an excuse to practice really, really, ridiculously slow slow moves. I was glad when it was done!

I'll round out my half-hour later tonight by throwing on the skirt and practicing skirt combos and spotting.