Last night I decided to try out an obscure workout by taking my first ever “Punk Rope” class at the 14th Street Y. Punk Rope, a playful workout to the tune of punk music, is the brainchild of ACE-certified personal trainer and USA Track & Field coach Tim Haft, and has since branched out to classes in 14 states!

If you haven’t jumped rope since your playground days, rest assured the skill will come back to you. But it will also make your body hurt about a hundred times more than it did when you were ten years old. At least if you’re a n00b like me.

Once I got my rope jumping legs back, Tim and his lovely assistant and certified personal trainer Shana Brady, led the class through a “Cops and Robbers” themed night of jumping rope, relay races, stretches, pilates and cardio. We skipped rope in time to the Clash’s “Police & Theives,” ran “jail-break” relays and acted out murders with plastic knives to the tune of The Queers’ “Murder In The Brady House,” did lunges and squats in an interpretive routine choreographed to the theme song of “Hawaii 5-0″ and did push-ups while rockin’ out to “Maxwell Murder” by Rancid, ” I Fought the Law” by the Dead Kennedys and “Breaking the Law” by Judas Priest, to name a few.

There was so much laughing and high-fiving that it hardly would have felt like a workout were it not for the shortness of breath and massive amounts of sweat. Oy!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 12:03 pm and is filed under Obscure Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.