Buff Girl on a Budget

On New Year’s Day, as my boyfriend and I were driving to one of my best friend’s home for a spontaneous dinner date, I noticed a sign hanging in the window on a second floor storefront that read, “Free Yoga Classes for 1 Week!” I casually mentioned to my boyfriend, “You know, with all the free classes studios offer, I could probably take only free or discounted workout classes for the next year and write a blog about it.” And so it began.

Welcome to my blog, Buff Girl on a Budget! My name is Jenn, and I’m a self-acclaimed buff girl; although, my coworker (and dear friend) will attest to my freakish strength as she once saw me bend a solid copper key in half with the mere touch of my delicate hand. Sure, some dude who is twice my size will probably beat me in an arm wrestle challenge, but for my size, I’m freakishly strong. I’m also a self-acclaimed and ridiculously proud Buff girl because I hail from Buffalo, NY. Because I’m currently a poor, starving graduate student, I’m ALWAYS on a budget. Ok, I’m not really poor or starving. I live in West LA and order an organic farmbox to be delivered each week to my doorstep. I will have you know, though, that the farmbox is in the yearly budget! And so I diverge.

I’m just going to be honest from the beginning: I’m a workout class junkie. I’ve had this conversation over and over (and over) again with friends, family, coworkers, classmates:

Friend: Oh, what are you up to tonight?

Me: I’m going to an aerial arts class.

Friend: Aw that sounds so cool* and unique and such a great workout. You’re so good about exercising.

Me: You should try it. It’s the best workout I’ve ever had, and classes are mixed levels.

Friend: Yeah, it sounds fun. How much is it?

Me: $25** for a 2 hour class.

Friend (jaw dropping, gasp): Wow! That’s really expensive.

Yeah, $25 a pop sounds pricey, but then I always need to go into my spiel about how we all go out in LA and pay $12 for a drink. After 1 round of drinks for you and a friend, which you probably down in half hour or less, you’ve already reached the price of my “expensive” class, liquored yourself up to need to buy multiple more drinks, and consumed useless calories rather than burn them. Don’t get me wrong; I love me a nice $12 drink, but don’t judge me for paying to workout if it gets me working out! I firmly believe that our health is something that is worth spending money on, hence the organic farmbox and the workout classes on a graduate student budget no less.

This blog is about finding a workout routine and possibly a new workout home from something that is already a personal hobby for me. I started taking regular workout classes when I graduated from college (the first time). I was working at my first full-time job; my college friends had moved away; I moved back home with my mom; I had just broken up with the college boyfriend. Let’s be real, I had lots of spare time and needed something to do in lieu of an actual social life (don’t worry my social life soon returned to it’s booming nature in no time). I found a local dance studio that was offering an “All You Can Dance Weekend” for $15. I had no friends or boyfriend to swindle into doing this “Dance Day” with me, so my amazing younger brother came with me to the studio for the Saturday classes to try breakdancing and hip hop. The next day, I went back solo to try out jazz, krump, and two aerial arts classes. That’s 6 one-hour classes for $15 for an average of $2.50. You can’t beat that! Even if you add in the fact that I had to pay for my brother’s classes as well, I paid $30 for 8 classes for a whopping $3.75 per class. In Los Angeles, people, that’s an absolute steal for anything. Let’s just say that jazz and krump didn’t really work out for me, but I discovered one love of my adult life: aerial arts*.

I continued going to this studio for about a month when I realized, I’m terrible at dancing. I have no rhythm nor do I look as sexy as the teacher doing any of the moves. I blame my mother for not putting me in dance classes when I was younger (because that obviously makes you look sexier when you take dance classes as an adult). Just kidding, mom, I know you probably saw me trying to dance as a toddler and knew right away, there wasn’t a future in dance for me. Thankfully, there were piano lessons, voice lessons, softball, tae kwon do, and whatnot to keep me distracted from realizing my lack of physical coordination until adulthood. Alas, I worked out at this dance studio for about a year thanks to their amazing introductory aerial arts classes in tissu and hoop. Then, I moved on to taking classes at another hot workout spot that focuses exclusively on aerial arts for the next year. Since I was working full-time and living rent-free with my mother at the time, I wasn’t as “on a budget” as I am now. After the initial “All You Can Dance Weekend,” I paid full price for classes for about 2 years, but once I became very busy and resources became more scarce during graduate school, I started be-bopping around to any and every studio that offered a promo on an appealing workout.

From this latter strategy on working out, I’ve been to quite the array of places including dance, yoga, pilates, and aerial arts studios. When I tell you workout classes on a budget is my hobby, in numbers, I mean that I’ve been to about 20 different studios in less than 4 years! I’d say I’ve become quite an expert in finding great workout classes on a budget (hopefully my “expertise” will inspire some grain of confidence in my abilities to keep you reading). So, how will this blog work? I’m going to detail my adventures out in the world of your everyday workout class junkie. My first posts will be about some of the classes and studios I regularly attend. These places do have discounts and promos (if anyone wants to check them out), and these teachers are some of my standouts that help get me motivated to workout! After I get myself situated in the world of blogging over the next couple weeks, I will start on my goal of trying out as many new workout places in LA “on a budget.” I hope this blog becomes a forum for discussing ideas about what kinds of traditional and trendy workouts (e.g., aerial arts, barre, spinning, crossfit) actually work you out and in what ways, some examples of studios to try out these methods for local readers, and anything else that comes up along the way such as the ideal workout leggings (ideal = not see-through among other things) or where to buy the cute new sneakers everyone in your zumba class is wearing. Trust me, looking good while working out improves results***.

*This typically comes after the “What the heck is that?” comment. For those of you who don’t know what an aerial arts class is, fear not, you will learn about it on this blog. If you’re daring enough to venture out and find an aerial class to try out, you will also discover tons of muscles in your body that you never even knew existed.

**The price has recently gone up which makes jaws drops even farther and louder gasps (it can actually be kind of uncomfortable listening to people’s reactions in public sometimes), but it’s still worth every penny (and a pretty good deal relative to the competition).

***Disclaimer: I haven’t actually done any research on this exact topic, but anecdotally it makes sense. If you walk into a workout class wearing an oversized T-shirt down to your knees, dusty sneakers you wore on countless hikes, and sweat pants with holes in them, you will not even be remotely paying attention in class as you will be constantly thinking, “OMG why did I wear this? How did that girl possibly manage to get the soles of her shoes to match the logo on her schmancy, perfectly-fitted LuLuLemon shirt? I don’t belong here. Oh gosh, am I doing the moves right? Who cares? Because even if I am, I still look like a trainwreck!” I’m not saying you have to wear name-brand workout clothes that match your sneakers…I personally only have 1 pair of sneakers. Sometimes they match; sometimes they don’t. All I’m saying is, logically speaking, looking good (whatever that means to you) while working out can only help your chances of success!