Lighten Up
Who said workouts must feel like work? Playfully theme classes are putting a new twist on fitness.
by jessica gordon
Walking at 5:30 a.m. five days a week for an hour’s workout hardly sounds like something anyone would willingly agree to do. And yet when I walk into the mirrored workout room at the HealthStyle Fitness building on a cold Thursday morning, there are already at least 15 women spreading out yoga mats. As I sit down and pretend to stretch a little, more women trickle in, many of them wheeling small suitcases filled with hand weights.
A lone man with a clean-shaven head walks among the women, stopping now and then to chat. By virtue of his gender—he’s the only male in the room—I know he’s Brian Calkins, president of HealthStyle Fitness, and the man who will lead me through the next hour of the Cincinnati Adventure Boot Camp for Women.
Calkins accepts a CD from one of his pupils, a chipper young blonde who seems far too alert for the early hour. He puts in the CD, a play list the woman created specifically for the class, and the boot camp session begins.
“Is this ‘Thriller’?” one of the ladies calls out. Yes, it is, and the song’s familiar opening creaks start to fill the room, while Calkins leads us through a short stretch, followed by a series of back-and-forth and side-by-side jumps. He gives the command for the next series of exercises, a sort of mini circuit where we alternate between various movements. First we hold light weights (eight pounds in my case), squat down with arms lowered, then stand up, simultaneously raising the weights above our heads. After 10 of these, we lie down on our backs and do chest presses, then work with a partner to do one-legged squats.
By now, “Thriller” is in full swing. “All right, tell the truth,” one of the women says. “How many of you stayed up to watch this video when it came out?” Chuckles ripple around the room as the women reminisce about their whereabouts in 1982.
Calkins continues to call out directives, displaying an uncanny knack for giving the order to switch to a new exercise just as I’m sure I really can’t lift my arms above my head even one more time. We take mini breaks throughout the session to drink water and rest.
Toward the end of the workout, Calkins calls out, “OK, now do push-ups as fast as you can for one minute.” Despite my burning arms, I find myself smiling. I’m definitely awake. And I’m definitely having a good time. “Now hold plank for one minute,” Calkins yells out. We all assume the position, our folded hands and forearms making a triangle on the mats, our stomachs held rigidly off the ground. Calkins ticks off the time, “OK, 45 seconds.” And then he has us do it once more. I don’t make it all the way through this one, but when I look up at the clock and see it’s 6:30 a.m., I don’t feel so badly.
In fact, I feel good.
That feeling is part of what keeps women coming back. “First of all, it makes me feel great,” says Lauren Niemes, a self-described long-term boot camper. “I started last May. I’m addicted.”
Each Adventure Boot Camp session lasts four weeks, and many women enroll continuously, attending for the entire year.
For Niemes, the regular morning workout sessions have had another beneficial side effect. “I have increased upper arm strength. And I’ve been sleeping better,” Niemes admits.
These women keep coming back for another important reason beyond the measurable physical benefits. “Working out with women, there’s the social support aspect of it,” Niemes explains. “If you’re not there, someone will ask you, ‘Where have you been? We missed you.’”
Another long-term boot camper, Susan Gray, agrees. “The energy of a roomful of women is wonderful.”
Calkins particularly enjoys working with an all-female class. “With men, there’s this ego that gets in the way,” he says. “Women don’t have that. Guys tend to be by nature more competitive—there would definitely be guys out there trying to one-up the other guys; Women, their nature is more connecting, supportive.
For many of the women in the class, that feeling of connection is a very positive aspect of their workout. “I have two little kids—aged two and three—and I work full time,” Gray says. “I don’t think I’d be getting up every single morning to be here at 5:30 a.m., if this didn’t feed me.”
Play Off the Pounds
If the feel good part of a workout sounds appealing, but you’re still having trouble with the idea of signing on for such an early start, you might want to try Pump Off the Pounds at the Pump It Up party facility in West Chester.
Pump it Up features two warehouse-sized “arenas” filled with an array of inflatable play structures. On most days the place plays host to a frenzy of jumping, sliding, climbing and generally rambunctious kids at play, all topped off with pizza, of course.
But three times a week, Pump it Up turns its primary-colored bounciness over to a group of adults ready to jump, climb and slide their way to a trim physique.
Jody Wallace, owner of Pump It Up in West Chester, says she came up with the idea after watching parents’ at kid’s parties. Initially reserved about joining in the fun, by the end of the party, most parents couldn’t resist at least trying once. “They’d go in and jump around and come out and say, ‘Man, that was a workout.’”
Wallace developed the Pump Off the Pounds with a local trainer, and the eight-week has produced some amazing results. “I have a contest every session—whoever loses the most inches and pounds gets a gift certificate to Mitchell’s Salon & Day Spa,” says Wallace. “One of the winners lost 13 pounds and around 10 inches. She said she really wasn’t dieting, it was just all this exercise.”
The element of play is a strong theme running through many of the most popular workout options these days. When working out looks more like fun and adventure, it begins to feel much easier, even though it may, in fact, be more intense than a traditional session at the gym.
Calkins reports the women in his are working far harder than they realize. “They don’t have to think about what they’re doing, and they don’t realize how hard they’re actually working. And it’s fun,” he says.
Many times women call him asking when they’re going to start the cardio training. “When I tell them they’ve already been elevating their heart rates at every class, they don’t believe me.” He tells them to wear a heart rate monitor when they’re at the gym and at boot camp and then compare. “Their heart rate is always higher at boot camp than at the gym,” he says.
The women in the Pump Off the Pounds have a similar experience. “They don’t even realize they’re exercising,” says Wallace. “We’re getting such good results, and you’re having so much fun,” she continues.
Specialized Classes
Of course, some like to get their exercise in a more straightforward manner. And there are plenty of options for the more traditional workout, albeit with a twist. Many gyms and workout centers,
especially smaller ones, are tailoring their classes to the unique needs of specific populations.
“One size really does not fit all,” says Mary Beth Knight, co-owner of Revolution Fitness in the Oakley/Hyde Park area. “There is a trend toward fitness classes and training for special populations, including programming for children, programming specific to those with Parkinson’s disease, for people recovering from cancer, pre- and post-natal women, a lot of new classes for senior fitness.”
Knight’s personal favorite is Restore the Core, a tailored to women who have just had babies. “I developed [this class] myself after having a baby,” she explains. “It really has a very specific approach to alleviate the problems that pregnancy brings, including posture changes and muscular imbalances.”
Knight explains that two of the muscle groups most impacted by pregnancy are the gluteus maximus and the abs, both of which help stabilize the body during movement. After giving birth, those muscles are not working at full capacity for quite some time. “There you are holding your most precious possession in the world going up and down the stairs. There are real reasons for new moms to get fit outside of just wanting to fit into their jeans,” she concludes.
Again, there are positive outcomes with this reaching far beyond physical changes. “I have seen unbelievable results—not just in the body,” Knight says. “Women stand up taller. It lets them move through their day. They have enough energy to be a wife or a girlfriend or a sister or a friend. Without being able to manage our bodies, that’s it. Once the kids are in bed, it’s flat out on the couch. But when the body works the right way, it doesn’t have to be.”
At the Venus Fitness Studio in Montgomery, owner Elyse Jarard focuses on a very specific clientele: mothers and daughters. In the mother-daughter classes, generational duos do modified circuit training together, incorporating both formal exercises and elements of play.
“They’ll do things like pass the medicine ball back and forth in different positions, and incorporate a lot of games, like hopscotch and balance and cognitive activities,” Jarard explains.
In every workout, Jarard focuses on teaching proper form and building healthy muscle memory. And while mothers and daughters are working on their physical strength, they have the added benefit of working on their relationship.
“Mothers and daughters don’t always communicate the way they’re supposed to—and this kind of gives them an extra opportunity for that,” explains Jarard. “I just think of it as a really good bonding experience because moms want to get in shape, and they want to help their daughters,” she continues.
Feeling Good Comes First
In a world where we obsessively monitor celebrity weight gain and loss, it’s particularly refreshing to know that fitness options exist where weight loss is merely a secondary goal.
“We’re inundated with the weight loss thing,” says Calkins. “Losing weight is a by-product of modifying diet and exercise. I’d rather have people think of it as, ‘I feel better, I have more energy,’” he says.
The boredom of another mile on a treadmill sends many a potential gym rat straight for the couch and television. But for our own good, we should all be raising our heart rates, stretching our bodies and building up strength. Who says it has to be a total chore? As it turns out, it doesn’t have to be all about sweat and pain and pushing yourself to your limits. It can be about fun, feeling good and connecting with others.
After all, play is so often what’s missing from our daily lives.