Ireland’s Fitness Party 2014

Ireland’s Fitness Party 2014 was one of the Health and Fitness events of the year in Dublin. It was organised by the Profi Fitness School .  It was a four day event (24-27 October, 2014) running through the bank holiday weekend. On Friday it was held in Goldstone Fitness in Dublin 12 and from Saturday to Monday it was held in St. Catherine’s Sports Centre in Dublin 8.  It featured great international instructors like Edyta Bartejczuk-Wolak, Kacper Wojcik, Luis Barbudo, Kasia Gasiarowska, Erle Liivak, Luciano Mottola, Heather Gordon, Nadia D'limi and Troy Dureh, just to name a few. The first day was all dedicated to cycling classes and a 2 hour marathon but unfortunately I wasn’t able to go. I did go to the last three days and they were great, full of different classes to try out (rip:60, dance classes, step classes, CrossFit, Reggaeton, circuit classes, H.I.I.T., pump and tone, fight club, different styles of pilates and yoga classes amongst others)

Me at Ireland's Fitness Party 2014

This event also introduced some different new trends in Fitness such as Piloxing (fusion of pilates, dance and boxing), KONGA, crazy jumping (a very fun class on the trampoline).

There was a variety of Exhibitors such as Dublin Holistic Centre, Fitness by Olena, Feel Joy Fitness & Dance Clothing, Smovey, XBody Ireland Ltd. (which really caught my attention as I got to try on the equipment and it is quite a challenging method of exercise using electric muscle stimulation).

There were more than 20 workshops about all things Health & Fitness. My favourites were Dawid Geler lecturing on Bodybuilding and also Oto Winkler’s Advanced Nutrition lecture. I found those workshops very inspiring and they gave me plenty of tips as a Fitness Instructor and Personal Trainer.

                No matter what age you were, as a Fitness Instructor, Personal Trainer trying to get more ideas or to collect CPD or simply a Fitness enthusiast, you would definitely have found something of interest at this Fitness event. I had great fun there and I am already looking forward to their next event! 

Expression & Movement Fitness Convention 3

The third edition of the Expression and Movement Fitness Convention was held at the Swan Leisure Centre in Dublin for three days (November 18th, 19th and 20th) and brought some international Instructors to Dublin, such as Luciano Mottola, Cesar Millan, Troy Dureh, Luis Barbudo, Karolina Libelt, to name a few.

Each day had a different purpose. The first day you could choose between two different workshops or two zumba classes. I chose to attend the two workshops because they were new to me. The first workshop was Power Stretch with Karolina Libelt. She explained different kinds of stretches, why you should do them and how to do them. She was astonished by the fact that stretching classes are not common to find in gyms here in Ireland. That always amazed me as well, because stretching is so important (see my previous blog entry). The second workshop was Assymetric step with Luciano Mottola teaching how to prepare an advanced step class with Assymetric moves that also has muscle balance in mind.

The second day was the aerobics day, with advanced step classes by Luciano Mottola and Cesar Millan. It appeared like they were dancing and the step was a mere accessory to complement the dance. Troy Dureh did an exciting Khai-Bo Freestyle Combat and a great hip-hop jam class, teaching us Michael Jackson’s choreographies such as Thriller.

The final day was designed as a body and mind day. It was more focused on different classes of pilates and an original Luis Barbudo’s body flow class (combining breathing exercises, pilates and yoga). There was also Cesar Millan’s Toning class where you worked with a variety of toning exercises, using weights and/or your own body weight. It was choreographed in such a way that you ended up doing many sets of different exercises, all disguised as a dance. Karolina Libelt’s Functional training focused mainly on lower body exercises with many varieties of squats, lunges and squat jumps. There was also a 120 minute Circuit Training Challenge (yes, you read right…120 minutes of circuit!) by the Profi Fitness School Team, with different stations such as abs exercises, arms (tubing), step, squats and lunges, suspension TRX, spinning, etc.

The weekend consisted of almost 20 hours of Fitness Classes and workshops distributed in those three days. It was a pity that the two Zumba classes happened at the same time as the workshops on Friday, but overall the Convention was very exciting and gave me plenty of new moves that could be incorporated into my Fitness Classes.

It is always important for Fitness Instructors to go to these Conventions so that we can update our knowledge, learn about new Fitness trends and improve our skills. I hope there will be many more Fitness Conventions here in Dublin in 2012.