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Late Night Workout Post With Video: He Never Rode the Bike Once...

...and yet it was a memorably good spin class. Equinox Soho. Darryl Gaines. The music was hip hop, and Darryl paced the room in white t-shirt and black pants. He made us climb a bunch of "hills," sprinting in 30 second intervals to collapse. But what he really did was create the sort of energy you don't normally find until midnight on a good dance floor. Everyone in synch, and him in the center like an inspired deejay, jumping straight up and down, sweating through his shirt, and gathering the energy in his calls, yelling people's names, asking us to give everything. Afterwards, I wandered around in a daze, light headed, staring at the kickboxing class, and the weight lifters. Darryl had ended the class with a remix of Mary J. Blige's "Just Fine." I couldn't find quite the same version online, but I did find an excellent video for her "A Family Affair," (embedded below), which gets just the same feeling. FYI: "Crunk" is hip hop slang, a mix of "Chronic" and "Drunk," and now totally old. Not to be confused with "Krump," which is a form of dance that came out of South Central L.A., about which David LaChappelle made the killer documentary Rize.

Family Affair - Mary J. Blige