It’s so exciting that we get to have guest instructors that come in to train us. The weekend training intensives are fabulous, but extremely exhausting. We start on Friday, generally around 4:30 and learn until 8:30 or so. Saturday morning, someone still teaches regularly scheduled classes, and then training resumes at 11:30 or so, and continues until about 6pm. If we are lucky, there aren’t any parties to do afterwards. Sunday, we wake up and do it all again! Starting somewhere between 8:30 and 10 usually, and learning until 2 or 3pm when someone has to teach our normally scheduled classes.
During training times, I always make sure to have my notebook. I am very much a visual learner, so I need to see things multiple times and then do them. After I try them in my own body, I need to write down my own directions how to repeat the pose and in order to be able to understand it later. We take in so much information with each guest instructor that it’s hard to remember it all, and even more so how to properly execute the moves we’ve learned after the trainer has left. My notebook and its contents have become especially important for me to be able to review the moves I’ve learned and be able to recreate them weeks later.
Throughout the weekend it is extremely important to take care of our bodies well. We all try to bring snacks to contribute to keep us going and fuel our bodies. Not only is food important, but also using our rest time to actually rest and get recovery time in. On Saturday night of trainings I like to take an Epsom salt bath to relax my muscles and start to review the moves we’ve learned. I’ve found that visualizing the moves is helpful for me in remembering things going forward from the training.
In general these weekends are long, and exhausting but so worth everything we take away from them.