時尚雙語:時尚流行的運動方式 krumping

First, there was krumping, the spasmic, freestyle hip-hop dance out of South Central L.A. You probably weren’t much good at it. It went global anyway. You might have it confused with crunk. That’s hip-hop, too. Southern, thumping, also fast. Usher had a hit with it a few years back.

O.K. Now it’s time to krank. This is not hip-hop. But it’s going to be huge. To experience Kranking®, you’ll need a Krankcycle®, and, for the moment, one of the few places you can find one in New York is at the Reebok Sports Club/NY, on Columbus Avenue. Avery Washington offers introductory classes. Picture ten Krankcycles in a mirrored room—they’re stationary arm bikes, basically, with just a seat, a suspended front wheel, and hand-pedals where handlebars normally go. On a recent morning, half a dozen women were Kranking, hands whirling in front of them, while a mixtape of Danzel, Janet Jackson, and Miguel Migs pounded from Washington’s pink-shelled iPod. Washington, an extensively muscled man wearing a red bandanna, and a certified Kranking instructor, was chanting, “Left, synch it, a little faster, come on, this is where you get the cardio, nice and smooth, right on, nice transition, left and right, both arms working together.”

Why will Kranking be huge? Because, for a start, Johnny G invented it. The last fitness program he invented was Spinning® (stationary bicycling in a group, basically). Spinning went beyond platinum, worldwide, and Johnny G, né Goldberg, rode the craze, which is still going, for all it was worth. He registered every Spinning-related trademark you can think of, did a licensing deal with Schwinn, and then sold it all, along with the instructor-certification program (a hundred and fifty thousand instructors in eighty countries), in 2005. Kranking is his comeback.

“It will be a slowish rollout,” Johnny G said, on the phone from California. “We’ll be in forty countries by March. I’d love to have ninety thousand units out there in the next three, four years. Then we’d be helping a lot of people.”

Helping people is Johnny G’s not-so-secret mission. As he writes in “Kranking® Trainer Philosophy,” a brief essay for the Krankcycle Web site, “It is my wish that all teachers and students realize their importance as human beings and strive for health, peace, wisdom, and success.” Johnny G is fifty-one, a former endurance cyclist, and speaks with a South African accent. There was traffic roaring in the background. He was sitting, he said, on a dune overlooking the Pacific Coast Highway.

The inspiration for the Krankcycle hit him in 2002, at a fund-raiser for challenged athletes. “There were a couple of legless people and, at the foot of the stage, a fourteen-year-old kid with a homemade hand cycle,” he said. “He was tenacious. So I had a go, and was absolutely exhausted in ten minutes.” The next frontier in the fitness business, Johnny G realized, was the upper body. He spent several years, and more than half a million dollars, developing and refining the Krankcycle.

Who came up with the name?

“I did,” he said proudly. “Came up with the spelling myself. The universe blessed me.” He gave a big, unironic laugh.

Back to Kranking class. (Come on, synch it.) Although Avery Washington makes it look easy, Kranking is not yet pulling in the crowds at Reebok Sports Club/NY. It could be the superficial resemblance to some onerous early-industrial assembly-line task—the sort of hard, silly-looking repetition that used to destroy a worker’s body in six months. It looks, let’s admit it, masochistic. Washington tried to mix it up for his group—“stand up, come round front, add some resistance, bounce into it a little”—but he admitted that he might need to mix it up more. “I think I’ll add jump ropes next week,” he said.

During a break, an older woman, slightly wild-eyed, came over. “I’m knocking all the time,” she said. She was talking about having trouble getting the Krankcycle to turn smoothly. “It’s driving me nuts. I love it, but I’m so upset about the knocking.”

Washington said, “You need to be in synch or you get that knocking.” This could be another possible disincentive. Johnny G himself mentioned “dealing with the clunk of the krank arm.”

You will be good at Kranking. It won’t be like krumping. You will realize your importance as a human being, and Kranking will be key. Krankcycles, by the way, won’t be sold through infomercials. They will be available to chiropractors and physiotherapists, but primarily they will be integrated into your workout through the certified gym-instructor network that has helped make Spinning what it is.

That means Avery Washington. He mainly teaches Spinning and body sculpt, which is also known as definition. “Every place calls everything different,” he said evenly.

Kranking先是有了krumping，一種即興的，痙攣似的hip-hop舞蹈，在洛杉磯中心南部興起。你可能不太在行，不管怎樣它都在全球流行起來了。有的人大概會把krumping跟曠課樂（crunk）搞混，兩個都是街舞（hip hop）。Krumping是幾年前由亞瑟小子發展出來的，在南部流傳的也很快。

現在，我們來看看搖柄運動（kranking）吧。搖柄運動不是街舞，但一定會風靡。玩搖柄需要一輛搖柄車（krankcycle），而目前紐約只有很少地方能找到，其中一個是位於哥倫布大道上的“銳步運動俱樂部”（Reebok Sports Club)。艾利·華盛頓（Avery Washington)在那教授入門課程。他在一間帶鏡子的房子裏放了十輛搖柄車。他們被固定在了地上，基本上只有一個車座，一個懸空的前輪，在通常是手柄的位置那有兩個手壓板。前幾天早上有六個女學員在這做搖柄運動，伴着從華盛頓的粉色iPod裏放出來的混合音樂（丹澤爾，珍妮·傑克遜和馬圭爾·米格斯的混合音帶），雙手不停地在身前旋轉。華盛頓有搖柄教練資格證，他肌肉結實，帶着一塊紅色的絲質手帕，叫着口令：“左，跟上！快一點，加油！這樣才能提高心肺功能，很好，很流暢，就這樣，動作很漂亮，先左，再右，兩隻手一起動！”

爲什麼搖柄運動會流行起來呢？首先因爲這是強尼G(Johnny G)發明出來的。他的上一個發明是動感單車（Spinning）健身項目（以組爲基本單位，在原地騎自行車）。動感單車的熱度在世界範圍內超過了普拉提，強尼G（生於哥德堡）簡直爲之發狂，其狂熱度至今不減，不過的確做什麼都值得。他註冊了所有能想到的跟“動感單車”有關的商標，並向思汶（Schwinn）申請了許可證，後來於2005年把這些都賣了，連同教練證書項目一起（包括80個國家的18萬個教練）。現在他帶着搖柄運動（kranking）又捲土重來了。

強尼G在從加州打來的電話上說：“這次推出的速度會比較慢，我們將在今年三月前打入40個國家。我想之後三、四年間在那些地方建起90萬個單位。這將使很多人受益。”

強尼G從不隱瞞幫助別人是他的使命。他爲“搖柄車網站”寫過一篇短文，名爲“搖柄運動教練哲學”，他在文章裏說：“我希望所有的教員和學員都能明白他們身爲人類的重要性，並努力追求健康，和平，智慧和成功。”強尼G現年51歲，曾是一名自行車運動員，說話帶有南非口音。從電話裏可以聽到車輛呼嘯的聲音，他說他正坐在一座沙丘上，看着太平洋海岸公路。

強尼是在2002年產生開發搖柄車想法的，那時他正在一個殘疾運動員的籌資人那裏。他說：“那裏有幾個沒腿的人，而臺下一個14歲的小孩正騎着輛自制的手搖車。他很頑固，所以我就試了一下，堅持了十分鐘就完全不行了。”強尼發現下一個有待開發的健身事業要從上半身入手。於是他花了幾年時間和50多萬美元來開發和改進手搖車。

不過這名字是誰想出來的呢？

“我想的，”強尼自豪地說，“我自己拼出來的，上天很眷顧我。”他爽朗地笑起來。

回來看看我們的搖柄課堂吧（加油，跟上節奏！）。雖然艾利·華盛頓讓搖柄運動看起來很簡單，還是沒能爲紐約銳步俱樂部吸引來大批學員。這項運動表面上看來就像一些早期工業時代繁重的裝配線工作，又辛苦又蠢還不斷重複，六個月就能把工人的身體拖垮。我們確實得承認做這運動有點像受虐狂。華盛頓試着讓他的組員把這項運動跟其他運動混合起來做——“站起來，繞到前面，用點力，擠進去一點”——不過他說他可能得綜合的再多一點：“我想下星期會把跳繩也加進來。”

休息的時候一位年長的女學員走過來，樣子有點生氣。她說她想讓她的搖柄車轉的順一點卻總遇到麻煩：“我總是撞到，都快瘋了！我喜歡這項運動，但老是撞到弄的我很生氣。”

華盛頓說：“除非你跟上節奏，不然就會撞到。”這是另一個可能會讓人受挫的原因。強尼G說過要“跟上搖柄咯噔的聲音”。

你能成爲搖柄高手，它不像krumping那麼難。你將認識到你作爲人類的重要性，而搖柄運動就是關鍵。順便提一下，我們不會用直銷廣告銷售搖柄車。只有脊椎指壓治療師和理療醫師可以買到，不過它們主要還是用在有經過認證的健身教練指導的訓練體系中，那也是動感單車走紅的模式。

搖柄代表着艾利-華盛頓，他主要教動感單車和塑身課程（也叫美體definition）。“每個地方都有不同的叫法。”他不置可否地說。