the glowmadic

Hello lovely readers!

Wow, what a day. Finally, I am sitting comfortably on the sofa with my sore legs stretched and rested on the coffee table. I am SO drained. Fact is, I’m just back from one of the hardest workouts EVER.

On a normal Sunday morning, it would be really hard to get me out of bed before 10 am, and almost impossible to tempt me to a 1 hour workout first thing after getting up. But this wasn’t any normal Sunday. Today, my absolute favourite youtube fitness guru Cassey Ho  was in town, and I definitely wasn’t going to miss that.

If you’re interested in exercising and clean eating, you might have heard of California-based fitness instructor Cassey and her Youtube channel Blogilates. She’s the creator of Pop Pilates, but also gives advice about healthy lifestyle, cooking recipes and how to stay motivated and reach your goals. I’ve been following her for years because of her upbeat, bubbly personality, which she injects in each of her videos. They’re fun to watch and actually make you want to work out even if you weren’t in the mood before. Her workouts aren’t easy though, I’m sore pretty much every time after completing her workouts.

Cassey’s cheery personality and her free videos, recipes and workout calendars helped me to lose weight and get back to a healthy lifestyle years ago when I was struggling because of stress and pressure from work/exams, and since then I’ve been following her. Not only is she a certified fitness instructor with years of experience in the field, her own line of fitness gear, dvd and recently a book, but she also has deep knowledge about nutrition and the human body, so you can be assured she knows exactly what she’s talking about.

So, Cassey is currently in London for Beautycon and booked a venue close to where I work for a free pilates class, so I definitely had to go! Since space was limited, I arrived there at about 9, although the class wouldn’t start until 11 am. In the end, it was a good idea to be there early, since the queue grew rapidly and due to the size of the room, only a limited amount of people would be able to participate. If you couldn’t make it for the workout though, you could still make it to the meet & greet afterwards.

After waiting for a good hour or so, the doors at Victoria House at Bloomsbury Square finally opened and we were allowed in. The room was big, the lights were dim and in front of us was a stage courted by pink curtains and with a back of black curtains with star-like lights. It looked really beautiful and gave the room a lovely vibe! So we rolled out our yoga mats on the floor and waited until everybody was settled and the room looked like a sea of colourful mats. When Cassey finally appeared on the stage, my heart literally skipped a beat! It took me a second to realise that the person I felt like I knew from her videos all these years was standing there in person, just a few meters from me. Such a crazy but wonderful realisation 🙂 Cassey in person is just like Cassey from the videos: energetic, fun and happy. She was smiling all the time and making everyone laugh with her comments. The workout itself was crazy hard, not just because it’s Blogilates, but for another very important reason: there is no pause button.

When you’re at home and doing the videos, it’s easy to just hit the pause button when you’re tired or need a glass of water. In a live class, there is no such thing. You have to push yourself to the max, and then hold or pulse it out. No stopping. It’s insanely hard but at the same time I really enjoy it because going the extra mile is what will ultimately make you stronger!

At last, after one hour of training our legs, arms, obliques, back, abs and probably other muscles I didn’t even know I had, we were all done! Cassey took a few group pictures and shortly after the meet & greet started.The queue was huge and there was a long wait to get up to the stage, but Cassey was incredibly sweet and took her time with everyone, giving hugs, making conversation, posing for pictures, signing books and posters…and of course she never stopped smiling! I’m so happy I got to meet her in person after so many years of following and learning from her through her awesome videos. It confirmed to me that she’s an authentic person who deeply cares about her followers and truly wants to help them achieve their fitness goals and building a healthy relationship with body image.

I had the most amazing experience and feel so blessed that I was given the chance to join the class and meet such an inspirational person!

Thank you so much, Cassey ❤

If you want to learn more about Blogilates, here are some useful links:

https://www.youtube.com/user/blogilates

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