I teach Nia. Nia is a cardio dance workout done in bare feet. It is no impact (or very low – I tend to hop a bit because I am having so much fun!) but allows for high intensity. Impact and intensity are different. I love Nia, but I also love other types of workouts. When I do other types of workouts they usually require shoes because often times the workouts get their intensity from impact. You might already know all of this because I have shared it before. You might also know — because I have shared this before — that I also love Turbo Jam. That is the exercise program designed for home use, as in DVDs, by the incredibly cute and bubbly Chalene Johnson. You have probably read me say before, “No matter how many times I do Chalene’s DVDs she makes me smile.” Her energy is infectious. Well, I’ve done the DVDs I have a lot over the years so today I decided to do them a little different. I decided to combine two things I love. I wore my MBTs while doing Turbo Jam.
Because of my toe/foot situation I had not been doing Turbo Jam a lot, but I am starting to do it again. I do it regular tennis shoes, just some cross trainers, and I sometimes have to think a lot to not move my foot in a toe position that hurts. When you do any type of workout in which you wear shoes you have to think about it a bit more when you are on carpet. Carpet tends to make it a little more difficult to twist on your toes and things, so sometimes it is better to not do that so much in order to 1) save the carpet and 2) save your knees. Even though I have always wanted to do a Turbo Jam workout in my MBTs I thought it would be more strenuous on my recovering foot. But it wasn’t really. It was fine. It was fun. MBTs really have the body using different muscles because the way the sole is engineered. So it was really fun to do a workout I have done at least a hundred times and have it feel different.
The MBTs really made me concentrate on what I was doing. When I do my Turbo Jam DVDs I have a tendency to think about other things. I just follow the moves and think or sing, I am not always concentrating on what I am doing. The Masai Barefoot Technology footwear really had me thinking about balancing properly and not just throwing my limb out. When I threw it out too far without being aware then I somewhat got off balance. Not just off balance in a way that the shoe is designed to make you be unbalanced, but my foot was positioned incorrectly in the MBT so I had to be aware of how I was extending. It was really nice. As I said it was nice to experience the workout in a very new way even though I have done it at least a hundred times. It was nice to have to really think about the muscles that enable balance. It was nice to have to think about balance in order to make certain my alignment was not off.
Now that my foot is so much better and I have confirmed that using my MBTs to do my cardio workouts that require shoes will not bother my foot, I plan to use them all the time. That is really one of the reasons I bought them. But I was not ready until now because I thought it would challenge my foot too much. It actually made toe movements easier because of the curve of the sole. The curve allows for easy almost automatic ball of foot or on the toe movements.
Yay! Newness in an old-but-beloved workout! Do you workout to DVDs? If you do, what is your favorite? Have you done them enough that you are ready to change ’em up a bit?
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