A couple of weeks ago something really funny happened in my Tuesday night Circuit Training class.

Something so funny that I’m still laughing about it.

Something so funny that I forced my gym friends to stage a whole series of pictures so I could write a blog post about it.

Okay, it’s probably not that funny.  Now that I think about it, it’s actually one of those “you had to be there” kind of funnies.  Probably not one of you will even crack a smile.

Unless of course, you were there for it.

If you read my workout posts, you probably see me using “runners” or “quick feet” in pretty much every class I teach.  I love this move because it’s a great cardio interval to throw in the middle of strength training.  It gets your heart rate up, and fast!  Basically all you do is run in place and move your feet as fast as you can.

My go to way of teaching these is to:

• Run feet only, keeping hands in fists in front of face (protecting!) and squeezing arms.
• Stop moving feet, and pump arms as fast as possible.
• For a final cardio blast, move both arms and feet as fast as possible at the same time.

Side note:  This combination is actually an entire Corpbasics Kix routine (Gasolina!), which I found out after I’ve been doing and teaching this move for years.

Anyways, in this one particular class I was trying to switch things up a bit.  I had the class do the runners (feet only) but going “around the world” and facing each direction of the room.  So we’d do 10 seconds facing front, 10 seconds facing side, 10 seconds facing back, and so forth.

(You can’t really tell that we’re moving our feet here, but we are, I promise!)

As we were rotating around the world, I noticed that most class members started letting their hands go.  Hands were going limp, arms were flailing and dropping down to the sides, and correct form was lost.  At this point, we were all facing the back of the room and I was no longer in front of everyone.  I yelled, “Hands Up!” with the ultimate intention of everyone moving their fists back into the proper place.

What happened instead?

This.

HAHAHA

Everyone started doing the quick feet running, but with their hands thrown up in the air!  My beloved quick feet runners immediately morphed into an awkward high knee / run / gallop / raise the roof type thing.  This was hysterical because only the front row of people (myself, Jen, Ashley, etc) realized the mistake, but nobody else could see in the mirror where they went wrong.

As everyone completed the “around the world” they one by one started realizing that “hands up!” did not really mean hands in the air.

I know this was my instructor bad.  I should have said something like “Make sure to keep your hands in front of your face!” but you know what?  I’m glad I didn’t.  Because then I wouldn’t have had this great moment to share with all of you.

And I wouldn’t still be re-enacting it with the gym ladies for three weeks now.  (Think awk high knee run into the CBC Studio).

And I wouldn’t have silly pictures like this to get me through my work day.

Have any of you ever been in a group exercise class when something funny like this happened? 

P.S.  Special thanks to Jen, Liz M, and Ashley for volunteering to re-enact for these pictures, as well as Liz G for playing photographer!

Have a great day, everyone.  Go put your hands up!