Life lessons learned from kicking ass
This is not me. Although I sometimes pretend to be Rachel, this is the real deal.
I’ve just started teaching Body Combat 46, which features Cadence’s I Surrender. It’s the last power-training track, the finale where you storm your class home in a furious battle of adrenaline vs fatigue. It’s a stompingly epic track, all the more so for instructors because of the performance given by Combat program director Rachel Cohen.
For the uninitiated, the Les Mills body training systems (Combat, Balance, Pump, Attack, Step etc) are ‘relaunched’ every quarter with new tunes and choreography. Instructors are provided with the music and a masterclass DVD where the program directors present the new moves. Across the Les Mills training systems the DVDs presentations vary from cheese-tastic to cringe-worthy to inspirational. Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you watch between your fingers and never show the damn things to anyone else, ever – and sometimes you watch these masterclasses and think: I have the best freaking job in the world. How did I get so lucky?
In Combat 46 Rach gives an inspired performance. She doesn’t talk technique; she doesn’t talk Body Combat/Les Mills PR crap. She just relates what she’s doing on that stage to her life, to all of our lives, in very real terms. She’s a role model to thousands around the world: to the instructors who model their teaching on her or through those instructors to the people who pack out exercise studios every day of every week in 75 countries around the world.