i may be faas, but i'm definitely not a puma

Actually, I’m not that faas either.

Virgin Active launched the Puma Faas Class earlier this year.  I went to the first four before I went to New Zealand and I LOVED IT.

stop saying faas.  it’s fasT.

But no – it isn’t!  It’s Jamaican patois mon, and that’s ’cause the work-out was endorsed by Usain Bolt.  And let’s face it, we all want to be as speedy as Usain Bolt right?

The class quite genuinely is faas – in every sense, but more on that in a minute – it’s only 30 minutes (and apparently there’s a 15-minute version but I’ve not tried that).  However, believe me, you wouldn’t want it to be any longer – the guy I did it with today actually couldn’t wipe himself off the floor to do the stretch at the end.  Literally.  He looked like me after I’d done Bikram.  I’d've felt sorry for him if I’d had the energy.

 me a go claas

When you do go a class, it’s pretty intense.  I’ll be honest, it’s tough.  But it’s awesome.  The work-out does change each time which is so nice in this world of Les Mills classes where every time you go it’s identical to the last time.

However they are fairly similar to each other in type of exercise.  It’s all about the plyometrics, the fast-twitch muscles (or should that be faas-twitch?) and the speeeeeeeeeeed.  As an example, in 25 minutes (we were 5 minutes late starting as we waited for the other dude to turn up), we covered the following:

a few laps of the room, setting left, setting right, setting both and jumping up at intervals

resistance sprints (these are the jobbies where one person presses the other’s shoulders, while that other tries to run forwards)

plank & sprint: one person gets into plank and the other jumps over him laterally, then sprints to the end of the room.  On his return, he drops down into plank, and the other jumps up and repeats the process.  Happens a few times.  It’s hard.

ladders:  lots of fun games on the floor ladder

tuck jumps:  agonising

burpees:  done in tabatas

plank/chaturanga runs:  also done in tabatas

races:  to the end of the room, then jog back

resistance band work:  tricep presses, squat presses (ugh), bicep curls, and rows

football sprints

jacks

 haaaaaaaaaaaaaad claas

 it’s seriously tough this class.

Believe me, with all that lot involved, there’s not a lot of time to, say, breathe.  Like I said, my classmate (and there were just the two of us today, so we essentially had personal training) got totally kicked by the burpees and chaturanga runs at the end.  I wasn’t so bad with those but at one point in the plank & sprints I thought I might actually have a minor cardiac infarction.  Or a major one.

fuuuuuuuuun claas

Having said that, it is SUPER fun.  It’s so quick, you sweat up a storm, you never stop moving (breaks?!  HA!) and you burn about seven billion calories.  In my case, 215 in just 24 minutes of working out.  Impressive.

It’s also really easy to fit in!  No time-turning required here – you can go at lunch, you can pop out of work for a lil bit, you can go before work and you don’t even have to get out of bed too early.  Pretty amazing stuff.  Why work long when you can work smart?

Finally, there are really few classes out there that:

a) are such a beautiful combination of resistance and cardio training;

b) include plyometric training;

c) have so much variety within each class; and

d) are different every time you go.

I really do recommend it.  Plus Usain Bolt actually introduces each class on the tape, so you get to listen to patois.  Win.

xxx

ps – I haven’t put many pictures of me on the blog, but here’s one of me after class today: