VIXEN WORKOUT

 

I didn't really come to Vixen with a purpose, but I found one anyway.

What made you join the Vixen Army? I can probably sit here and tell you everything I've been through but it's easier to just tell you that I'm like a cat... I have 9 lives--not sure how many I have left though.                       In 2016 my life drastically changed at the beginning of the year,  and my whole world was upside down. I knew it was time for me to take back control of so many things, my health included. I came to the Vixen Workout one day just "for fun" and I literally have not stopped coming back since.  I really didn't come to Vixen with a purpose, but I found one anyway. It's become my little daily escape and in some ways my therapy. Once the music turns on and the lights are going, you have no choice but to keep up and focus on the moves.  For that one hour you really just forget about everything else that's going on in your life. Name: Vanessa Baez Age: 33 Kids? One furry little terrier named Lucky Favorite Cheat Meal? Cheese Fries or Ham Croquetas from Islas Canarias  Favorite Routine? "Ah Leke" and "So Sophisticated"  Favorite Lipstick? MAC Candy Yum Yum   Favorite Popstar? Britney Spears   If you were a Popstar, who would you be? A perfect combination of Rihanna and Nicki Minaj  Life Motto? Keep your head high and your middle finger higher.    [gallery ids="788,789,787" type="square"]  

Sooooo, you are thinking about becoming a Vixen Instructor. Yasss! We are excited you are thinking about joining the fam and we're sure you have tons of questions. We have made this Instructor Certification FAQ to answer any questions you may have.

Vixen partnered up with Propel Water this passed weekend in their CO:LABS event in NYC.    Vixen founder, Janet Jones (aka "The Bawse") lead the workout with dozens of fitness enthusiasts most of whom were new to the #Vixenarmy.  The theme for the weekend was #Madetomove and Propel did a great job in making sure everyone did just that.  Propel Co:Labs event was loads of fun and we are so excited to welcome the new members to the #Vixenarmy.  Check out some event pics below. [gallery ids="646,645,665,663,671,666,648,652,653,654,650,657,656,660,659,670,668" type="rectangular"]

Vixen has tremendously helped me with my weight loss goals. Since starting in May 2013, I have lost almost 40 pounds. What I love most about the workout is how I feel when I am "performing." I am so many things to do many people and I love to take that one hour to just be me. I also love the woman that I have met and helping to support them on their various life journeys. Vixen has tremendously helped me with my weight loss goals. Since starting in May 2013, I have lost almost 40 pounds. What I love most about the workout is how I feel when I am "performing." I am so many things to do many people and I love to take that one hour to just be me. I also love the woman that I have met and helping to support them on their various life journeys.

  GlamSquad and Vixen Army commander, Janet Jones, got together to create the ultimate Vixen Glam look. GlamSquad is a new app-based beauty provider delivering professional and affordable beauty services to the home, office, hotel, or wherever you may be. We love them, with the touch of a couple buttons you've got a hairstylist and make up artists at your door ready to glam you up within an hour. Hello! GlamSquad visited our Body & Soul Miami location and prepped girls with what, we like to call, the "Vixen Glam" look. This look consists of a bold winged liner, please use waterproof liner, and a bold lip. We recommend you use a matte lipstick or lipgloss, cause with all that hair twirling, we don't want your hair sticking to your lips. Vixens arrived an hour earlier than our Monday night 8:30pm class, and got slammed up. Hair was curled, liner was touched, and one of the GlamSquad team members broke down the perfect winged liner look for the girls to try at home. The app is free, we say, "Why not download it?!" Thanks GlamSquad! [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iovarKFVh00&w=560&h=315]

The Vixen Army woke up early on Saturday January 9th to join Bianca and Ana at Body & Soul, in Coconut Grove, for our 90 min Calorie burn. We ask our Vixens to wear their calorie counters and prepare themselves for a real sweat. Ladies crowded Body & Soul on Saturday Jan 9th bringing along friends, co workers, Vixen friends, and of course, their calorie counters. The Vixen instructors rehearsed routines before the class was packed. It wasn't too quick after that, Ana and Bianca had the girls warming up with 35 booty pops! Yes, booty pops is a thing. Bianca knows how to keep the class energy up! You think she's small? This girl won't stop! Ana werkin' it with the girls. Booty Battle time! DJ Laz is blasted through those speakers and we're taking it way back to middle school. We are the Vixen Army! SUCCESS!! We received some client calorie counter shots after class, showing off how much they burned. Way to go girls! [gallery ids="601,602" type="rectangular"]

                 

This week, we posted a Transformation Tuesday post on Instagram encouraging our #vixenarmy to share their weight-loss stories.  Reading through all of them has simply brought me to tears.  It is so incredibly humbling to see that the purpose of why Vixen was created is being served.  I happen to share a few of the instagram posts with my friend Robin (who's also an avid #vixenarmy member and publicist)  and her response was a simple "Doesn't this make it all worth it?"....Hell Yeah it is. Along with the many blessings of entrepreneurship comes many struggles, stresses, and many sleepless nights.  Add motherhood to that, and the guilt that comes with being  a working mom with a very consuming career.  Mix in the pressure of putting on a hell of a performance every night for hundreds of women regardless of exhaustion or anything that is going on in life, because I completely understand how hard it is for these women to leave their lives to come to Vixen in search of some solace.  That is bigger than anything I can ever be going through.  I am sure I speak for myself and every other Vixen instructor... Hell yeah, it's worth it. My first Vixen Class was taught October 2012.  I had no idea that this day would change my life forever.  In order to understand what Vixen is, it's important to understand the road that got me there.  How in my complete self-destruction, I gave birth to myself and to something much greater than me.  How losing my way put me on the road to Vixen. Early Life I started dancing at the age of 3.  I was painfully shy as a child, so much so that my teachers on several occasions asked my parents if I was mute because they had never heard me speak.  I remember life in general to be absolutely terrifying, but for some reason I never felt that way when I danced.  I was able to completely focus on the task at hand and completely lose myself in the beautiful melody of the piano.  I was lost in my own world of movement and music and I felt safe... i felt brave... Fast forward to my first year of high school, that's when dance took a whole new meaning for me.  My father was a terrible diabetic and became very ill.  My mom became the sole breadwinner so my little brother and I became my father's caretakers. Due to a gangrene infection caused by diabetes, my father lost his foot.  I was 15 when I learned to clean my first amputated wound.  Those visuals still haunt me.  After the foot, they amputated the lower part of his leg right below his knee....  Then went the other foot.  Then it went piece by piece until my father had to have both legs amputated above the knee.  Seeing the wounds of a double amputation is awful, having to clean them is even worse.  To this day, I get chills remembering my father's screams from the phantom pain, which is severe pain coming from limbs that are no longer there. My mom did such a great job of keeping it together. I remember her waking up every morning at 4:30am to cook the meals for the day, clean, prepare everything my father would need then head off to her 12 hr work day.  She never made it seem like there was anything wrong with our family.  It just was what it was, and we had to do what we had to do.  Seeing her seem unbreakable made me feel like I had to be just as strong.  I felt like I couldn't give in to any of the storms of emotions I had inside of me, so I quickly learned how to not to feel. As you can imagine, I hated being home so I would spend endless hours in the dance studio.  All the things I learned to numb outside of the studio, I would feel so deeply in the music I danced to.  When I danced I was able to channel the emotions inside of me and make them beautiful.  When I danced, the strength I was so wildly faking at home felt real.  I never danced because I wanted anything out of it, I danced because I needed to lose myself... it retrospect it was to save myself. My father passed when I was 21 on Christmas day, he was 57yrs old.   The experience of caring and loving him molded every part of me and I am forever thankful. My twenties   I made a career in dance.  For years I danced, I traveled, I assisted everyone who I could possibly learn from, I choreographed, produced, and taught all over the country.  I became the director of a talent agency and brought great tours and jobs to the city which taught me a lot about business.   I had the respect of large companies and artists in my field... I was living my dream and I was successful. For anyone whose familiar with the life of a performer, you are a total gypsy with no solid ground to stand on.  It's exciting, always changing, and addicting.  After many years of living this life and seeing all of my friends settle down into adult life, I started to question everything.  The life that once felt exciting all of the sudden felt very lonely, voided, and irresponsible.  The  voices I had always ignored pressuring me to pursue something practical suddenly became all I can hear.  I started to look at my friends who put their dreams aside to pursue a safe life with envy.  My friends who finished college, got a job in corporate america and married their college sweethearts.  They were safe and I felt that I needed safe .  The mind is a very powerful thing and I convinced myself that every decision I had ever made in pursuit my dreams was absolutely ridiculous.  I convinced myself that my "happily ever after" was going to be found on the same road they were on... Marriage, children, & the security of corporate america. The Black Hole This  4yr period of life I call the black hole.  I left everything dance related in pursuit of the safe and the practical. For the first time in my life, I ignored everything my heart had to say and started listened vigorously to society's roadmap to adulthood: I got married, found a job in finance, and had a baby. For 4 years I walked in the shoes of my friends and so many other women.  I lived a life of routine based on fulfilling many roles on the day to day.  Not the roles of a dance performance, as I was used to, but the numerous roles a woman needs to play on the daily: The roles of mother, wife, breadwinner, domestic diva. My daily schedule went a little like this: 6am Got up to tend to the baby  630am Make breakfast for the family and prepare & pack lunches for work 715am Get baby dressed and iron work clothes for husband 8am Drop baby off at care 830am Start work 530pm Rush to pick up baby at care. 645pm Arrive home and prepare dinner for the family 730pm Feed baby 8pm Bathe baby 830pm Put baby down to sleep 9pm clean the house of the mess made by cooking, baby, do laundry 1030pm shower go to bed. 6am.  REPEAT 6am. REPEAT. 6am REPEAT. This was life.  If you notice on the daily schedule there is no time allocated for me.  I bet a lot of you can relate to that. Everyday I woke up with a little less of me inside of me.  The light I once had inside of me got dimmer everyday.  Dance was the one thing I had used my entire life to make me feel brave, to make me feel powerful, to help me channel my emotions, and it was no longer there for me... and I was lost. For the first time in my life I went through a depression.  I remember using the 30 minutes I had for lunch everyday to hide in the bathroom stall and sob.  I remember laying in bed sometimes for days at a time to just cry.  I remember looking in the mirror, and not recognizing the person reflected back at me.  I remember the feeling of invisibility.  For someone who was raised on stages under lights, this feeling of invisibility felt detrimental to my spirit.  I also remember the immense guilt I felt for not finding happiness in this life, as my friends had. Everyone makes it seem so easy... my mom, my friends...Why do I feel like I'm drowning? The woman in the floral dress is me.  I never took pictures during this time, so I forgot that I looked like this.  This was mother's day 2010.  Ava was 8 months old. The Turning Point Summer 2011, I got laid off from my finance job.  My husband at the time was unemployed as well and I was forced to apply for food stamps since he didn't qualify for unemployment benefits.  I had to go back to the only thing I knew, which was dance and entertainment, in order to provide what I could for my family.  Let's just say this didn't sit well with someone who is used to an invisible wife.  As women, we can be natural martyrs.  As mothers,  we will do whatever is best for our children, regardless of our own happiness.  The only thing that could've made me leave the life I was in, was the realization that the my daughter's future was much better if I was alone.  So I grabbed my daughter, filled whatever clothes I can fit in a trash bag, moved us both into my mothers, and started over. August 2012, I decided to open up a dance studio.  Our opening was in September 2012.  The quick decision to open a business didn't leave much time to get the word out so I didn't have a lot of kids to start.  I had an empty time-slot Monday's at 830pm so I had the bright idea to bring in a fitness class.  I figured that a fitness class would bring adults who'd possibility register their kids.  I had called a few Zumba instructors to teach, but I couldn't afford their rates.  I was a choreographer, so I knew that I could come up with something... I just didn't know what. A girl's night with some friends provided my "aha" moment.  We were out in a nightclub, looking to let loose and disconnect from life for a couple of hours and we just couldn't.  I just sat and observed these women who were my friends but also mothers, career-women, who could not disconnect from the roles that they have to play everyday. OH MY GOD.  These are women who their entire adult lives only know the life that put me in a deep depression.  They have no idea what if feels like to be on stage and feel the exhilaration of losing yourself to music.  How do they express themselves?  How do they channel emotions?  They have never experienced themselves as I had, the larger than life person I transformed into on stage.  That was it... that was my moment.  That was the moment that it became my life's mission to make sure that every woman around me has the opportunity to experience themselves that way.  I needed to share the one thing that got me through any tough moment in my life. The one thing that made me become, if even for a fleeting moment, all of the things I wasn't brave enough to be in real life.  The one thing that made me feel alive.  I had to figure out a way to make something that only a few get to experience available to the general public. That Monday, I went to the studio to come up with choreography for this new class of mine.  I knew I wanted to make it easy to follow and that the steps needed to be similar to the choreography I'd use for an artist.  The music needed to by edited the same way music is edited and curated for a concert.  I needed these women to feel like performers.  I turned off the lights in the studio and I turned on a single spotlight that my aunt had found in a garage sale.  For the first time in over 4yrs, with the heat of the spotlight, the darkness of the room, and the bass beating through me as if it was my very own pulse.... I remembered who I was... Vixen was born. STAY HUNGRY. LIVE FIERCE. The Vixen Workout is a culmination of every life experience I've ever had.  "Don't let them steal your light": Don't let life take the light that shines so bright inside all of us.  Self abandonment does not make you a better mother, wife, woman.  It does not!  Let your light shine bright and by doing so, light the fire in everyone around you.  That makes you a great woman! "Selfies": I encourage selfies in class because for 4yrs I never photographed myself.  I lived invisible.  The feeling of living life feeling "Unseen" completely killed my spirit.  So I want all of you to take pictures of yourselves damn it, and be proud of being a woman. Feel and know that you are beautiful because whether you weigh 500lbs are 100lbs, you are beautiful! Live life alive! Don't settle for the safe and always NO MATTER WHAT listen to your heart.  There is nothing more powerful than a room of a hundred women seeking solace, channelling emotion, and losing themselves in movement & dance for an hour.  That is what Vixen is. Please know that when I see an overweight woman hiding in the back of my class, I see myself in her.  Please know that when I see a woman hide from taking a picture, I see myself in her.  I see myself in all of your struggles and I feel you... I feel all of you. Thank you for taking the time to read this.  Thank you for taking the time to share your stories.  Please understand that only by sharing your stories do you let other women know they're not alone.  Most of all thank you for your support the last 2.5 years.  We truly are an army of incredible light.  We are the #VIXENARMY. XO Janet

Once a month the Vixen Workout holds a 2-hour Master Class in Miami and New York.  The purpose of the Master is to be able to teach Vixen technique and thoroughly explain the moves that you will see in class. We teach you how to correctly execute the movement so you can go "full-out" in your next Vixen Workout.  The class usually begins with isolations, which is when you isolate a particular part of your body.  I do this in order to make the class aware of each body part and to warm up the body for our exercises.  I then start teaching how to execute individual moves that are frequently seen in the workout.  After the class looks comfortable with the individual moves, I start phrasing them together.  What I mean by choreography "phrases" is a combination of our individual moves.  Think of each individual move as being a word, and our phrases being sentences and each routine is a story.  Since the goal of our regular Vixen Workouts is to get your heart rate up so you can burn fat and get a total-body workout, we are unable to stop and explain every single routine before doing it.  That's why the Master class is highly recommended for both veterans and novices.  If you missed this Master class, don't worry.  We have one every month usually on the 3rd Saturday of the month.  Sign up at www.vixenworkout.com Here are some pics of Saturday's Master Class in Miami.     

We thank you for taking to time to "stop, drop, pauuuuuse" and give use your honest feedback. Our goal is to create the ultimate Vixen Workout experience for every member of the #vixenarmy, whether it’s your first, 50th or 500th class. We have learned that we needed to make some immediate changes to our check-in procedures to make sure that every single one of you has a great experience with us.  We have made immediate changes enforced in all states to ensure that each and every Vixen walks out of class feeling like J. Lo each and every time.

• Class capacity at all locations has been lowered in order to create more space for everyone to booty shake.Check in process will now begin 45 minutes prior to class start time.
• You will no longer need to arrive hours before class time.
• Absolutely so saving of spots in class from staff or clients.
•  Sign & stay: you must be present to sign in for class and can no longer sign in for others, you may no longer sign in early and leave the premises
• Cell phones are for selfies only. filming during class is not permitted.
• Everyone must be 18yrs old to attend Vixen.  This will be enforced.
• At intermission, all instructors and staff will be switching the front rows of the dance room to the back and back rows to the front. Everyone will now have the opportunity to have a great spot in class.

Vixen Workout Miami at Body & Soul Gym: • Vixen Workout two-a-days are encouraged on Tuesday and Thursday nights. If you are turning up in the 7pm class, you will be allowed to sign in for your next sweat session when sign ups open for everyone. (7:45pm sharp) • The front doors will open to the first 30 ticket holders 10 minutes prior to class start time. Vixen Workout Dance Assistants will be there to guide you on the floor before class starts. Click here for more information on vixen equiette. Thank you #vixenarmy for your endless support. Love, Vixen Workout team

HOW TO SIGN UP THROUGH A PC: 1. Visit www.vixenworkout.com 2. Click which location you are from (ex. Florida, New York, Chicago) 3. At the top left, click the "classes" tab. 4. In the classes tab you will find a calendar, put your mouse over each day to see where and what time we are holding classes. 5. Under the calendar you will see our location addresses. 6. Below that is the pink "reserve your spot" button, click it! 7. It will then transfer you to a website called www.mindbodyonline.com 8. Create a username and password to make your very own Vixen Workout account. 9. Once that is finalized you will be in your Vixen account, which you will be able to do many different things: MY INFO TAB:

• Profile (Enter your credit card info under Billing Info to have it on file so you will never have to enter it in again.)
• My Schedule
• Visit History
• Purchase History
• Account

CLASSES TAB: You will see our full schedule and be able to reserve your spot for any class/classes. (Make sure you are under the right location, for example if you are in Chicago you would need to change the location in the drop box from "Vixen Workout" to "Vixen Workout Chicago") EVENTS TAB: Here you will be able to sign up for any events or Master Classes. (Next Master Class with be in Miami with Janet Jones at Body & Soul 7/19/2014 From: 11:30 am - 1:30 pm) Class cards or memberships will not be accepted for this event. Cost $25 credit card only. ONLINE STORE TAB:

• Products
• Services
• Gift Cards
• Account Payments
• Contracts (where you would purchase the Membership, $110 a month with a 6 month contract)
• Shopping Cart

HOW TO SIGN UP THROUGH VIXEN WORKOUT APP: 1. On your iPhone or Android visit the APP STORE and Search "Vixen Workout" 2. Download the Vixen Workout app. 3. With the account information you created on mindbodyonline.com, you would use same log in info to log into app. 4. Once your in the app you will have 5 different tabs: Schedule My Info Whats Hot (where you will find our hot new merchandise for sale) Buy Services (where you would purchase your classes/class package) Contact info (feel free to contact us with any comments, questions, concerns)