I Worked Out with Princess Anna and You Can, Too

As many of you know, I’ve prioritized exercise this past year. Working out isn’t my favorite thing, but I want to be healthy for myself and my kids and so I can live the life I want to live. I have three kids five and under. If I’m going to be the mom I want to be, I have to keep my energy up!

Now, I really thrive when I stick to pretty strict routines. I can feel a difference if I miss even a few days of working out. When I went to Disney for eight days with Stella, I didn’t plan ahead for exercising, and even though we walked around nine miles a day, I could feel the difference. So, in January when I went to LA for the Florabundance Design Days conference, I knew I had to have work-out plan so that I could stick to my schedule and not miss any gym time!

I decided to have some fun with it and try seven different LA fitness classes for each of the seven days I was in LA. So here’s how I worked out with the movie stars (literally-- keep reading) and survived to tell you all about it!

Here are the classes I tried:

LIT METHOD

So with Lit Method, you work out at your own little station that has a rower, some resistance bands, a TRX band, and a mat. The class starts out pretty dark, and as the workout intensifies, the music and these little lights scattered all throughout the room also intensify. Even though I stayed at my little station, I was constantly moving, and the music and lights definitely helped me keep up my stamina. It was a 60 minute class, and by the end I was dripping with sweat.

This was my first class, and I was honestly so surprised by how nice everyone was. This ended up being true of all the classes I tried. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but I think any gym experience can be a little intimidating when you’re just visiting, or it’s your first time, and you think that everyone else must have their set routines and gym friends. But seriously, everyone was so kind and so helpful. It felt like southern hospitality!

RISE NATION

Rise nation was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And I’ve carried twins for nine months. I thought I was going to die, and it was only a thirty minute class. Literally, three minutes in and I was thinking, “I want this to end, I want out. I’m going to die.”

But when I finished, and I did finish, I felt amazing.

Now, when I first got there and set myself up on my designated machine, it wasn’t working. I turned to the girl next to me, and while trying to fix my machine, asked if anyone was on the machine to her left. No one was, so I ended up switching. I made conversation, telling her it was my first time doing this. She told me, “it’s a great workout.”

So about fifteen minutes in, I’m dying, and she’s killing it. Obviously she’s totally unaffected and is just doing such a good job. When the class ends, the lights go down (which again, is great, because you can only be so self-conscious when no one can really see you), and I get off my machine and turn to the girl next to me.

I say, “Oh my gosh, I really didn’t think I was going to make it through that.”

She says, “I know right? It’s such a good workout.”

I finally get a good look and her. And holy crap, it’s Kristen Bell. I almost died working out next to Kristen Bell.

As soon as I got in the car, I called Stella and told her Mommy worked out with Princess Anna.

CYCLE HOUSE

This was probably my favorite workout of the week. It was my first time wearing cycle shoes and clipping into the bikes, and everyone was super kind and helpful. And the workout is pretty intense. You can burn up to a thousand calories in one hour.

I’m starting to realize that for me, workouts are like 60% lighting and music choice and 40% instructor encouragement. And Cycle House does both really well. The workout is hard, but the instructors are so motivating that it’s totally doable.

SOUL CYCLE

I liked Soulcycle. It’s another cycling class similar to Cycle House, and I think if I had done Soulcycle first, I would have liked it better. But, since I’m comparing it to my Cycle House class, the atmosphere just wasn’t quite as motivating.

It was still a great workout, but it wasn’t as high-intensity, there were fewer people in the room, and it wasn’t as energizing as my Cycle House class.So although I liked Soulcycle, If I’m in LA again and can only choose one cycle class, I’m signing up for Cycle House.

BARRE 3

I loved the Barre class I took. If you haven’t been in a Barre class, it’s basically like you’ve become a professional ballerina for a day. And if you do it enough, you can get the body of a ballerina without all the plies, positions, and leaps.

My muscles were shaking the entire time as we did squats and pulses and other barre exercises. You basically keep pushing small muscle groups until they max-out.

I love that when I leave a Barre class, I immediately feel like I can see new muscles. I literally look down and think, “wow, I look better. I did not have that muscle before.” Instant gratification.

ORANGE THEORY

A lot of people love Orange Theory. It’s a lot of high-intensity, muscle-confusion exercises. We used the treadmill, rower, we did strength-training, and I could see my heartrate and workout information the whole time, which I really like. Having all the information right at my fingertips is helpful for me.

BODY BY SIMONE

Body by Simone is a trampoline class. Obviously, that’s super fun.

So far, all the other classes I’d taken with people who had a wide range of body-types and ability-levels. For some reason, that wasn’t true of this class. EVERYONE was about five feet tall and weighed no more than 100 lbs soaking wet. I’m 5’4’’ and… not 100 lbs.

Now, this wouldn’t be an issue, except that it was a trampoline class.

If you’ve ever bounced on a trampoline with a small child, you know that different sized people bounce at different rates.

The instructor kept having us do certain things on the beat, and everyone else was hitting the beat except me.

I even thought maybe I had a faulty trampoline. I stopped a few minutes in and switched to a different trampoline, and let me tell you, it made no difference. So while I had a ton of fun, it was hard to keep up with the exercise.

The instructor did come up to me afterwards and was so sweet. She told me I did a great job and invited me to come back, and even assured me that the trampolines were overdue for tightening and that’s why mine was so slack. I knew the truth!