My title might lead you to believe I’ve landed on the cover of some magazine. I intended it to be a bit misleading. Ü I have been teaching a lot of BodyBalance classes, covering for the regular instructors who for one reason or another couldn’t teach them. In local parlance I’m called a “reliever.”

Last week was the first time I experienced the lifestyle of a full-time freelance group exercise instructor: dashing from gym to gym, doing more than one class in a day, and spending dead time in between classes eating or searching for something to do. (Of course, since I’m juggling three freelance jobs now — I have a mosaic career, so some people call it — none of that dead time is really spent idle. I’m usually on my laptop writing drafts for Living Asia or encoding updates for the Genesis websites.) Most of the BodyBalance and yoga instructors with regular classes were away being trained for yoga certification, and there are only a few of us who can cover classes during the off hours of the day, i.e., any time between 9am to 6pm. So a lot of their classes fell into my lap. Imagine just last week I did two classes on Monday, two on Tuesday, three on Wednesday, two on Thursday, and three on Friday. Then, today I had two classes thirty minutes apart in two different gyms. Whew!

I can say, it is a tough life relying just on classes to make ends meet. In my case, I’m blessed that I have parents who are supporting me as I try to explore all the avenues opening to me (both in group exercise and in mass media). Doing BodyBalance classes isn’t just about the paycheck to me, since to pay back training I taught 32 classes for free. But if I can get paid to sweat and do something I love, why not?

I do envy those people who teach two or more programs (especially those who can teach freestyle classes) because they have some variety. Right now I can’t wait to start mixing between BodyBalance releases, probably for the reasons that the Standing Strengths and Core Abs tracks for release 37 take a lot out of me.

Great news, though: In less than two weeks, I’m getting a regular class of my own. Yep, that’s right; after four months of paying back the cost of my Les Mills training by covering other instructors’ classes, I now have four classes a month guaranteed. Wednesdays 7:30am at Fitness First Libis (Eastwood). Booyah!

Tags: BodyBalance, Fitness First Philippines, Group Exercise, Les Mills

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