I got the new music today for RPM 35. I like it a lot. There are a couple of great songs (Only One Too – Lenny B. Club Mix – Jewel, Riding On The Wings – Motiv8 Airplay Extended Mix – Motiv8 ) and a few that I have heard a lot before (Paradise City – Guns N’ Roses, Sunchyme – Dario G and Crazy – Gnarls Barkley). All in all I think they’ve done a great job with track selection.
There are a couple of new things with this release when compared to other releases. First off, they’ve included times in the choreography notes. This isn’t really a big deal, but I’m happy about it because I always went through it and worked out the times myself. The other thing is to include heart rate percentages to the perceived exertion levels. Comfortable roughly equates to 60-70%, uncomfortable is 70-80% and breathless is 80-90%. This is great because it allows the instructor to bridge the gap between all terrain or road drills classes and RPM classes – while I don’t see much of a difference anymore, some people perceive RPM as a fitness only class vs. the high intensity interval training class that it is.
This is the third release that I’ll be learning since I took the training and the first since I got my certification. I won’t be the lead instructor for the release because that honor is going to Rachel; she wasn’t able to do it last time. I love team teaching with her because our styles are so different. Her voice carries throughout the gym and she loves the music really loud, my style is a little more introspective and coaxing, she makes demands, I make requests. There’s great chemistry between us and I think it adds a lot to the presentation. I’m really excited about it!
Given that this is my third release, I know what I’m in for when I receive the release package from LMI. Step one is to watch the video and look for new types of things in the class. Next I look over the choreo notes to see any changes and then I start to listen to the music over and over again. I’ll be teaching this release for every single class for 3 weeks once we release it so I’m going to need to know these tracks perfectly and they are going to become a big part of my life. I’ve found that by listening to the same set of songs over and over again, they come to take on a meaning that is based on what I’m doing at that particular moment in time – Afterglow from release 33 really gripped me and quickly captured the feelings of new love that started to develop in the weeks following the training, Take Me To The Clouds Above came to represent the pleasant escape and unity with another that this new love affords us and Smells Like Teen Spirit is such a hard working track that it came to represent the level of effort that one needs to put into anything to become their absolute best. For this reason more than anything I am looking forward to the next weeks.
The 9 songs that make up RPM 35 will come to mean something very important to me. Right now looking forward, I have little idea what that will be. That’s a big part of the fun of instructing. Music is primal and it is a great way to capture the essence of an experience in a way that allows us to recreated the feeling at will. In 10 years when my life has moved forward, I’ll be able to come back to the early summer 2007 by throwing in the release 35 CD. For better or worse, a moment in time will be captured and preserved forever.