Armed and Dangerous

Rudy Mettia’s armed and dangerous is an excellent way to get thirty minutes of exercise, focusing on arms, shoulders and core. Strength and endurance are the main focus of this class. While Rudy’s style is advanced and challenging, he has a way of talking you through it so gently that you’re somehow convinced that what you’re doing isn’t as hard as it really is, while time seems to magically fly by.

After a brief warm up to activate your core and legs, class progresses towards eye of the tiger on each side, and long down dog holds. This fires up your shoulders, traps, triceps and biceps, pushing you to a burning edge. As you enter into forearm plank for a rest, activating your lower abdominals and oblique’s will prevent you from collapsing into your low back.

What a lot of us don’t notice is how powerful and core strengthening arm holds are. When you take the time to activate the core, pull your ears away from your shoulders, and push through your heels, you practically float right up to your arms. The poses are incredibly integrative, and arm and core work are extremely complimentary.

As class winds down, you move to eagle crunches on the back help fire up the core one more time while opening and stretching the shoulders. When it feels like you have nothing else to give after multiple planks and shoulder strengthening poses, Rudy sympathizes and winds down class with child’s pose and some nourishing twists.