Sweating it Out with Under Armour at IDEA World {Day 3 Recap}

Hi there!

Hope that you all had a fabulous weekend. My mother-in-law has been in town visiting from Jersey, so my weekend was full of showing her a good time in SoCal. More on that later, but today, I’m recapping my third day of the IDEA World Fitness Conference!

(Yoga posing in front of the convention center, of course.)

My Saturday morning began bright and early with a 4:45 AM wake-up call to get ready for a….

At Blogfest the day before, Under Armour did a presentation about their new campaign geared towards women, I WILL WHAT I WANT, and trainer Shauna Harrison shared a bit about her personal story. The campaign sends an amazing message of women empowerment, and Shauna seemed pretty kickass, so I was excited to work out with her the next morning.

All Blogfest attendees had the opportunity to nab a free Armour39 heart rate monitor from Under Armour, and the workout was the first time I tried out my new workout tech. I’ll talk more about Armour39 in a future review post, but it’s pretty sweet fitness tech that tracks factors like heart rate, calories burned, and workout intensity, with a chest strap that automatically syncs to an app on my iPhone.

I wasn’t sure what type of workout we’d be doing, and I walked in to see that a circuit of exercises were set up for us to execute, including box jumps and other plyometric moves, lunges while standing on discs and rope work.

The rope exercises were pretty interesting for me, because I used to see trainers coaching their clients through rope work at my old gym. I always thought that it looked pretty easy, and I sort of wondered why everyone would have a tough time getting their rope swings to sync properly…. well, now I know, because rope work is harder than it looks my friends!

After we cruised through a round of each exercise, we did a second round with a cardio interval in between each exercise. Let me tell you, jumping lunges feel tough at 6 AM when you’ve had little sleep and are already sore from workouts in previous days of the conference! But I loved every second of it.

Shauna then led us through some disc work and yoga poses while rocking out to hip-hop music. I have to say, I didn’t know who Shauna was before IDEA World, but I’m now a fans of hers because she was great. It was a fabulous way to start my day! A shot of the group:

(Via Shauna’s Instagram)

Next up, I had the chance to attend a conference session about healthy coaching for weight loss success. It was neat to switch gears a bit and be in a room of health coaches and doctors discussing the best ways to guide clients into weight loss. Some of my favorite ideas from the session were:

• Health coaching is helping people help themselves. Ultimately, we’re inspirers.
• Our job is to help people dig into their story and share it without fear. We help people discover the motivation that they have inside of them.
• As a coaching method, seek to first understand, then to be understood.
• Some important questions to ask yourself as a health coach include: Do I listen more than I talk? Do I keep myself sensitive and open to this person’s issues? Do I seek to understand this person and their story without judgement?

Afterwards, I met up with Brittany to try BarreVite, a barre workout that incorporates bands, weights and cardio dance intervals. A blurry shot of us girls:

Now, I was a competitive cheerleader for 10 years growing up, but I’m not much of a dancer per se. Give me some choreographed moves and I catch on quick, but when it comes to classical dance types of moves, I’m about as ungraceful as they come.

The reason why I enjoy some types of barre is because I can really feel it working my muscles. For me, BarreVite was a little too dance-like, with not enough of a burn, but there was no certainly no harm in trying it out.

Forgive my misfitting shirt over a shirt – it gets confusing when you’re either sweating your booty off in workouts, or freezing your butt off in conference session rooms that have the A.C. pumped up!

After exploring the expo hall more, Britt and I enjoyed some lunch outside of the convention center. We nabbed some yummy grub from an Orange County gourmet food truck called Barcelona OntheGo. I had a roasted veggie quesadilla and a blackberry limeade, which was nice and refreshing in the 90 degree heat. I don’t eat out of many food trucks, but after this one, I might start getting grub from them more often!

Next on my agenda was a yoga groove session. As soon as I walked in, I was warmly greeted by the instructor, Skip Jennings. One of the first things he said to the class was, “There’s something in your spirit that’s calling you to be here today, so you’re in the right place.” I smiled at how true that statement seemed to be for me in general, as I felt like being at IDEA World as a whole was such an amazing experience that left me feeling so inspired and passionate.

Skip described Yoga Groove as an energetic approach to yoga that stresses the unleashing of joy with each yoga pose, an urban zen flow as he called it. He emphasized the power of music, and how the flow and vibrations of music can more deeply connect yogis to their practice.

Skip said that life is too short to be serious, and shortly after, the introduction to the session was over, and I found myself with my eyes closed while music started bumping, being instructed to just move freely with the vibrations of the music. Oh crap, I thought. I hope that I don’t have to do this for the entire 2 hours! 

At first I had to bite my lip from giggling at thinking about how funny we all looked doing this sort of trance dancing with our eyes closed. This was certainly out of my comfort zone, but I kept an open mind and moved to the music as freely as I could manage.

Before I knew it, the freestyle dance portion of the session was over, and we transitioned into a vinyasa flow class — an awesome one at that. Instead of doing all of the same moves I had done in previous vinyasa classes at the conference, Skip switched it up and had us doing some balance moves and poses I hadn’t done in awhile. It wound up being a relaxing and restorative session.

(Moe, me, Caroline, Marielle, and Brittany)

All in all, Blogfest and IDEA World was a seriously amazing time! The sessions were great, but the best part was the people. It was so nice to meet new friends and instantly connect with them. I have to say, us health bloggers are a great community full of awesome and inspirational people!

Other conference recaps:

• The Highlight of IDEA World’s Blogfest: Jillian Michaels! {Day 2 Recap}
• The IDEA World Fitness Convention: My First Time Doing PiYo {Day 1 Recap}

Share with me… Have you ever done rope work? Do you hit up food trucks often? Have you ever done a yoga class with freestyle dance involved?