The Guardian Weekend | 13 February 2021 47extra raar,” the instructor began. I found my raar
halfway through the warm up; even at its lowest
impact the accent is on physical rebellion, waving
your hands in the air like you just don’t care. There
is a huge amount of punching and quite a bit of
shoulder-shimmying, but not in the ballroom-
dancing sense – more like you’re trying to start a
fi ght in a pub through the medium of mime. Come
and have a go if you think you’re hard enough, is
the overall mood. There is a bit of air guitar and
a fair amount of freestyling. This
means leaping about – at its peak,
it should look like a pogo, which
might be one of the most aerobic
moves on Earth. One of Hawkey’s
mission statements is that, if you
can understand the philosopher
Judith Butler , you can do anything.
I haven’t read much Butler, but for
some reason the segue appealed.
Certain physical activity
demands a type of music you’d
never listen to in the bath. You’ll
know that if you’ve ever tried to
make a running playlist and ended
up with ears full of Snow Patrol.
I always thought it was determined
by matching the beats-per-minute
to your foot strike, but there’s more
to it than that. Livin’ On A Prayer,
for instance, has a relatively low
BPM (122), yet it had me tearing
about like a rat on ecstasy.
There are three membership
levels : for £10 a month you get one
new routine a week. They’re an
hour long, though, and split into two sections,
so for me that takes a week, since no way could
I get through a whole one, at least not the fi rst
time. Once you’re a member, you can access
the whole month’s output, so I was originally
scratching my head about who would go for the
£25-a-month Ultimate Rockstar pass. After a
week, I understood: it’s a bit like listening to Magic
FM in the back of a cab – once you lose yourself in
it, you start to think: why don’t I listen to this all
the time? Body & mindZoe Williams
RockFit was a word-of-mouth suggestion, by way of social media. Launched and
extremely popular in Plymouth, it probably would have stayed there were it not for the
massive boost that online classes have had over lockdown. Now it seems to have a lot of
fans. Or maybe, in the great echo chamber of modern life, the kind of people I like love it.
The “rock” is exactly what you’d expect : every band that sounds like a German compound
noun for banging your head on purpose ( Rammstein , Halestorm ); everything you’d have
heard on Kerrang!’s drivetime in the good old days ( Bon Jovi , Faith No More ); everything that
sounds as if, somehow , it’s going to hurt ( Queens of the Stone Age , Nine Inch Nails ). The “fi t”
element is way more left fi eld and won’t remind you of anything you’ve done before.
The founder is Hannah Hawkey , who arrived at the idea via an MA in performance
practice, and it shows. You’re not moving methodically through your muscle groups:
you’re trying to fi nd your inner demon. “A dose of some feelgood today, along with someThe full hour’s
workout burns 900
calories, apparently.
If you wanted to
do that walking, it
would take a full
working dayWhat I learned
0
y.d
KELLIE FRENCH/THE GUARDIAN. CLOTHES: SUPPLIED BY MY GYM WARDROBE (MYGYMWARDROBE.COM). SHOES: SAUCONY RIDE 13. MAKEUP & HAIR: S
ARAH CHERRY.
Wave your hands in the air :
this rock workout is a riot
Solutions
Quiz
1 Bob Dylan.
2 Range of politically acceptable
ideas.
3 Doge of Venice.
4 Cocoa.
5 Stentor (hence stentorian).
6 Denis Law (1964).
7 Bush baby.
8 First tank in combat (Somme).9 Invented by women:
Josephine Cochrane; Mary
Anderson; Valerie Gordon;
Stephanie Kwolek.
10 Teletubbies: Tinky-Winky;
Dipsy; Laa-Laa; Po.
11 Subjects of Alan Bennett
plays: The Habit Of Art; The
Lady In The Van; The Madness
Of George III; Single Spies.12 Rivers fl owing into
Morecambe Bay.
13 Designed portraits of the
Queen used on coins since 1953.
14 Types of dagger.
15 Gave names to non-alcoholic
drinks: Virgin Mary; Shirley
Temple; Arnold Palmer.Crossword See right.OBWDBW
ONEOF YOU OMAN
AVOPLT
ANNA MERCEDE S
RIERR
ISLYING HOWL
OGRO
PEGG COMPTON
RRWXE
KAREN I NA ABBA
NGLNRE
BORG D I NGL I NG
SSEESZ