Over the Deepavali long weekend, Under Armour launched the #UACelebratesWomen movement, in order to celebrate women from all walks of life for constantly pushing their boundaries and challenging the status quo. 

Workout sessions and retail therapy 

And in doing so, they put together a series of activities targeted at women, from workout sessions to retail therapy for women to treat themselves.

The workout sessions, which were held in front of the Under Armour store at Bugis Junction, had comprised of a range of activities including yoga, boot camp, boxing, HIIT and Tabata style sessions. It was quite varied and there had been something to cater to everyone.

As for the retail therapy sessions, these included the chance to win all-expenses paid trips and exclusive merchandise at a fraction of the usual prices, with a minimum of $150 spent on women’s products.

A solid HIIT session

Under Armour invited me to attend one of the sessions, and I picked the HIIT session last Sunday, because the timing fitted in best with my schedule.

I was expecting a pretty solid workout.

And the session, which was conducted by Singaporean fitness power couple Natalie Yeo and Joshua Woo, definitely lived up to its name – it was intense; in fact, just several minutes into the workout, my sweat glands were working on overdrive and my heart was pumping hard.

I have to say that it had been quite weird to be working out in front of a store at a busy shopping mall, with curious onlookers crowding around and probably wondering what was going on.

Session was split up into five parts

Our HIIT session had been divided up into several different components in order to give us a larger variety of exercises for a complete, full body workout.

After a simple warm-up, the first comprised of repetitions of bodyweight exercises such as jump squats, ski jumps, burpees, crunches and mountain climbers. 

I am no stranger to these type of exercises as I do them regularly with my running training group. However it still doesn’t mean that I particularly enjoy doing them.

The second part had comprised of getting into groups of either three or four people, getting down on all fours and doing animal movements to get from one end of the workout space to the other. 

This had been something that I had never done before and I took time to get the hang of some of these exercises.

The third component comprised of planking; for instance, constantly shifting from an elbow plank to a full hand plank, and planking – while crossing the left leg to the right side under the body – and vice versa.

I can hold a standard plank for a couple of minutes or so, but this was something else entirely, and the twist on the classic core exercise definitely felt more tiring than holding the standard plank.

The final part of the workout comprised of us doing eight burpees and eight squats within less than a minute. 

There were five rounds to this in total, and the shorter time we completed each set, the more time we would have to rest before the beginning of the next set. This was definitely intense.

One minute break in between parts

In between each component, we were given one minute to rest, catch our breath and drink some water. The organisers had thoughtfully provided water and Pocari Sweat for us, both served chilled.

I think that I must have drunk about 1.5 litres of water in all, throughout that hour-long session.

Easy cool down to end the session

The intense session was followed by an easy cool-down which felt like a breath of fresh air, compared to the workout that we had just been exposed to.

And I made the most of this time to stretch out my muscles and catch my breath, in the hope of reducing the impact of delayed onset muscles syndrome when I wake up the following morning.