In April 2015 I attended my Body Balance initial module training. I learned on release 68. While I had never really considered doing Body Balance training in the past, my dear friend and participant Andrea had expressed interest in doing the module and after some discussion, we decided to do it together. This was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my fitness career and the module weekend was truely life changing for me.

The manual and release DVD kit (we were one of the last module to get physical kits) arrived in the mail a couple of weeks before training and I had received an email to say my tracks would be 3 and 8. At the module, the track was set in stone and I actually got just track 3. This was a double track that went for 8 minutes so way to get thrown it at the deep end! I grasped the challenge to learn this amazing track though and slowly built confidence in my ability to be able to teach it.

The trainer for our module was Dee McNeill, a veteran Les Mills instructor who has had involvement in most of the programs over the years. Initially I was a bit apprehensive about having Dee as my trainer because I had always found her to be a bit scary whenever I saw her at workshops but by the end of the weekend my opinion of her had completely turned around. Dee was a presenter on the video for release 68 so we were actually quite fortunate to have her give us advice based on her experience preparing for this release in NZ.

We arrived early and ready to go. Brief introductions ensued and then it was time for the masterclass to be presented by our trainer. We then moved on to the training. The weekend was a blur but consisted of the usual, learning all the history of the program and the moves of the release, finding connection to the music, correcting technique, practising our meditation scripts and presenting tracks. We had to present our tracks 3 times over the weekend, once on the first day and twice on the second day.

On the second day, we participated in the Body Balance challenge which was 90 minutes of tricky yoga poses. I found this experience to be quite profound and of all the module challenges I have experienced, this was by far the best one ever. In fact I’d even go as far as to say, it was life changing. And to be honest, I don’t think I would have experienced quite the same epipheny if I’d had a different trainer.

Overall, this was probably my favourite Les Mills module of all time. The group of people I got to work with consisted of so many different personalities and each individual brought so much value to the experience. I really feel honoured to have worked with such a diverse team of people.

The module training experience is similar these days except now choreo and manuals are received digitally. My best advice for the weekend is:

• Know your choreo and music inside and out. Listen and listen again to your tracks until the music is engrained in your soul. That is the key to connecting in Body Balance. Knowing the music will really allow the choreo to just flow through your body and you won’t even have to think about it.
• Take warm clothes because between participating you sit down to learn (and meditate) and it can get quite cool.
• Take lots of food and drinks as not all of the module locations have food outlets nearby.
• Have fun! Get to know your fellow trainees and just soak in everything you can because everyone will have something to teach you.

If you have any questions about my Body Balance journey. Please feel free to Contact Me.