This post is sponsored by Nuffnang.
When I was invited along to try the new fitness craze of Cardio Tennis, my first thought was that it sounded pretty lame. Like the fitness classes my parents did in the 80s called Aerobicise or Roller Tone. However I’m a total sucker for anything new and fitnessy so I went along in good spirits.
This is Belinda the instructor. Fitness classes are very promising to me if the instructor looks good in shorts.
It was the most fun work out ever. Ever. And I really don’t say that lightly. I would call myself a fitness enthusiast but certainly not a fanatic. And when I say ‘enthusiast’ I mean ‘only because it’s necessary’. If my body and brain functioned without exercise, I’d have a really hard time caring about it to be honest. This means that the more distraction there is in a fitness session, the more likely I am to not hate it. I need an instructor who understands that I’m like a dog and they need to be able to cater to that and be all ‘Hey something shiny! Go get it Carly!‘ and distract me until it’s all over and I’ve burned 450 calories and I’m as high as a kite on exercise endorphins. That’s exactly what Cardio Tennis does.
A bunch of very fancy tennis equipment.
For a start, you get a heart rate moniter with a watch so that you know if you’re working to the right fat burning level. I’m such a geek and I’m secretly quite good at maths (shhhh! Don’t tell anyone!) so this little gadget was right up my alley.
Some sort of intense fitness drill. I’m thinking… lunges???
Another lovely thing about Cardio Tennis is that most sessions are held outdoors. I’m a self proclaimed sun-loathing, typical Melbournite vampire but inspite of my usual sun repulsion I actually really enjoyed being outside in the fresh air. It felt so wholesome and tingly.
The lovely team from Tennis Australia who acted as a fake group for my Cardio Tennis classes. I want one of those singlets so badly.
The sessions are run in drill like form with mini-games and short bursts of activity so you never get bored or have to do something you don’t like for very long. Like burpies or vollying. I cannot volly to save my life. I just shriek and cover my face with the tennis racquet. I like to call it strategically defensive playing.
The Ladder of Death. It’s made of soft material and is not raised from the ground at all yet I still managed to trip over it twice.
If you want to try Cardio Tennis yourself, the Nuffies and Tennis Australia are giving away a super cool Cardio Tennis gift pack including – (terms and conditions)
* A Wilson Tennis Raquet
* 5 Cardio Tennis session passes
* Suunto Heart Rate Monitor (seriously, this thing is the bomb. I’m going to buy one.)
* Cardio Tennis Singlet top (so jealous of the winner right now.)
All you have to do to enter is tell me all about your worst/most embarrassing/most hilarious exercise or fitness story in the comments section.
I had never played tennis in my life and now I’m like this guy.
If you need a little inspiration, I like stories where people fall over or their pants fall down. I also have a morbid fascination with horrible injuries so something along those lines would please me greatly.
Good luck!
22 Comments
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HILARIOUS I’m a “dog” too. The quick changeover of activities made it easy to forget that I was working out. Kind of felt like I was back at school but in a good way. I love the way you make me laugh xx
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That’s what I felt like! It went so quick! I love our matching poses. 🙂
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Haha this looks amazing! My main memories of tennis is playing it at school, where me and my friend would take turns to hit the ball as hard as we could and spend the rest of the class “looking for the ball”. I don’t do spin anymore so I need to find a new cardio!
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Totally. When I was in year 6 we walked to our local tennis courts and my bestie and I would dawdle on purpose and try to miss the class.
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My lasting memory of tennis was a sad first love story in primary school… I was in kindergarten.. He was in year 6 (I believe he was in your year.. Simon green?) I was totally in love and it wasn’t mutual.
I smashed the tennis racquet over his head.. I got in big trouble.-
Was he American? If so I know exactly who are talking about and he was fine!
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Embarrassing exercise story? CAN DO!! Once, I managed (and I’m still not sure how) to launch myself off the step during a “step class” so enthusiastically I gave myself a slight concussion. the ENTIRE class stopped to laugh at me, and I’m sure it must have looked pretty funny.
..here’s the thing though.. I don’t want to win a cardio tennis prize. When I was a young’un I begged my mother for piano lessons for many years.. and she forced me to go to tennis class instead, because, “Tennis is a Social Skill” – I think she had dreams of me meeting a wealthy man at the tennis club we would never go to. It’s given me a very unjustified loathing of tennis! So no prize for me thanks, just wanted to share my silly story 🙂-
Thanks for sharing! I appreciate it. 🙂
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My friends and I were in PE, playing a game of catch which inevitably devolved into pelting each other with tennis balls. I’m all about precision in aiming the ball, which is why, when I overarm hurled a ball at my friend, I threw wide by several metres and hit a passing rowing coach in the balls.
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Brilliant.
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My most embarrassing fitness moment happens every Wednesday morning when I go to yoga. I’ve had 3 kids, my pelvic floor is not what it used to be (or should be or could be). Every time we do the 3 leg downward dog, where you put one leg up in the air behind you, I fill up with air. Then when I move my leg back down – the air comes rushing out, and the gentle Enya soundtrack the instructor plays is never loud enough to cover up the noise. No mater how hard I brace my core and sqeeze, I just can’t stop it. I would quit yoga, but them my poor pelvic floor would be in even worse shape.
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OH EM GEE. I freaking love this.
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I don’t know about an exercise story, but I vividly remember running races with my littlest sister over a classic wooden bridge. It was at a stop in the middle of a long car journey and both of us had been cooped up for too long. I was about 14 and she would have been about 3. So they weren’t ‘races’ as much as just running.
The bridge has these lovely wonky planks, and I remember starting our 5th or 6th race and thinking ‘okay, this had better be the last one, cause she’s going to trip soon’ and… I fell over. Badly. Skidded a couple of feet.
It was awful.
I ended up with a massive contusion on my knee, which made it so painful to bend, and I had to cope with a long car journey home. Thank god we had a van and I could put my leg up. I also had various scrapes and brusies all over the place.
And it was at the end of the summer holidays, and I had to start year 8 looking like a little kid with a big sore on my knee.
Sigh.
Funnily enough, now it’s 15 years later, and I want to get into running! Can you believe it?! I am not generally a falling-over type of person, but this memory has haunted me.
I’m glad you enjoyed the class, it does look like fun (although I’ve never played tennis).-
It’s awesome fun! Like major, major fun.
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As I live on another continent, I have no business entering anything, but since confession is said to be good for the soul, I will recount my most embarrassing fitness experience. In junior high, we were divided into three groups for PE. Group One included the jocks and the popular girls. Group Two included those who didn’t quite make Group One. Group Three (me and mine) were those who tried but for the life of them couldn’t do a pushup. Group Four were the Bad Girls who always seemed to have their periods throughout the swim season. My group had to run around a long track in the park across the street from the school, and we had to take turns timing each other and writing the time down (for some pointless reason, this was important). I was first in my pair to run, and I did a predictably poor job. My partner then ran, while at first I stood there watching, but she was so slow that I started conversing with other girls and before I knew it, she had passed the finish line and staggered up to me, asking what her time had been. Of course, the stopwatch was still ticking and I had no idea. I should have just made something up, but I didn’t, and the poor girl had to run all over again. I don’t think she ever forgave me.
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Oh that’s horrible! I feel terrible for her!
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My most embarrassing exercise story ends with hospital, as most of my stories tend to do actually!
When I was a wee young thing in Year 11 my small class from a tiny country school got to go on an excursion to Sydney, and during this excursion we get to go ice skating. This had happened every year at my school for the past fourteen years and not a single person had ever been hurt.
Now, I’m not the most co-ordinated lass out there, and was ready to sit on the sidelines and drink hot chocolate with a classmate who was also not keen to strap on some skates, but my best friend Michael dared me to come skating, and of course, I can’t back down from a dare. So I got my skates on and hobbled out onto the rink, clinging to the wall for dear life, while four-year-olds zoomed past me, making me feel even more ridiculous. I got about 10m away from the gate, hobbling and shaking the whole time, before I decided I was steady enough to let go of the wall. Big mistake.
I skated away from the wall, only to have my skate slip on a very wet part of the ice, causing the skate to fold in under me, snapping the bone at my ankle and sending me tumbling down to the ice, where I shattered some bones behind and around my knee. As I hit the ice I let out a scream, but a lot of my classmates thought I was laughing, because apparently I laugh like a lunatic. Only my friend Kurt realised I was hurt, and he came speeding over to help, only to fall flat on his face and cut his eyebrow open. I had to be pulled across the ice on my back off the rink by a friendly local skater, and wait for 45 minutes without painkillers for the ambulance. I ended up in hospital with a broken leg and my friend Kurt ended up with six stitches across his eyebrow. To make it even worse, the hospital was so short staffed, the doctor that plastered my leg up brought my friend Kurt, stitches and all, out of the waiting room to come help him plaster my leg because all the nurses were too busy.
It was a very interesting evening to say the least. I now have an impressive metal rod in my leg.
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Oh my god! That’s almost too awful for me to laugh at! Almost…
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Feel free! My elder sister rolled around with tears in her eyes from laughter when she was told. 🙂
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well – got talked into a fundraising bike ride (soft sell push) up over WestGate – 46 kms – hadnt ridden since high school – so fucussed on riding over WestGate and not falling off (either – bridge or bike) 15kms in up, up WestGate – success – 35 kms in they send us up Farnworth Avenue hill near VUT – I stuffed it, stopped it so bad, … I stumbled. fell off. jelly legs – the lot …I bought down the next three bikes behind me !! Embarassing ………….
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Bwa haha ha! I love that your story has carnage. 🙂
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