Fitness

Flywheel Sports for Hardcore Cyclists

Cathy Anderson — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:00:00 GMT

As if cycling in place isn’t a discouraging enough concept, too many studios have sweaty riders crammed together and forced to listen to bad techno. So when Ruth Zukerman, a certified fitness instructor for more than twenty-five years, cofounded Flywheel in New York in 2010, she wanted to offer a motivational and hard-core experience. At $25 a class, Flywheel provides stadium-style seating that allows riders to easily see their instructor and the TorqBoards—large flatscreens at the front that display the class leaders and performance data. Talk about motivation! Each bike is also equipped with a personal data tracker to record your progress. Add in personalized music mixes by an internationally renowned DJ, and this style of cycling is a fun (but still sweaty) way for you to get your full-body workout. Atlanta is the latest city to become hooked on this fitness sensation, which already has locations in Chicago and throughout Florida; the Buckhead studio opened in late January. Flywheel also offers FlyBarre, a yoga-meets-Pilates circuit training mashup that’ll tone your body in a sixty-minute group class.

Flywheel Sports
98 West Paces Ferry Road
678-702-5684
flywheelsports.com

Illustration by Shaw Nielson

Cathy Anderson is one of our editorial contributors.
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Swept Away by Curling

Kimberly Turner — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:00:00 GMT

Illustration by Jesse Lefkowitz

During the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games, while most Atlantans watched curling and wondered why grown men and women were playing what appeared to be shuffleboard on ice, Jeff Williams and his then eighteen-year-old son Maxwell decided to try bringing the sport to Georgia. Though they’d never touched a curling stone, they created a Facebook group to find others who, like them, “thought it looked fun.” Less than two years later, they’ve unearthed nearly 400 local curling enthusiasts (from middle schoolers to seniors), started holding regular Learn to Curl events, and become the only curling club in Georgia.

Curling involves strategically sliding forty-two-pound granite discs down 146 feet of ice toward a target. Teammates sweep the ice with brooms, which reduces friction and makes the stone travel farther. Members of Knoxville’s Great Smoky Mountains Curling Club donated brooms and loaned stones—which cost $7,000 or more per set—to Atlanta’s developing club, and the Marietta Ice Center provides a venue for events. The ACC hopes to have enough paid members ($100 per year) to start leagues this winter, and the group would like to eventually add kids curling and wheelchair curling and to build its own dedicated facility. The next Learn to Curl event is January 9. For more information, visit atlcurling.org, email atlcurling@gmail.com, or follow @atlcurling on Twitter.

A la Carte Classes and Yoga Cards

Cathy Anderson — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:00:00 GMT

Illustration by Luci Gutiérrez

If you’re looking for a way to jump-start a fitness regimen for the new year but don’t want to lock yourself into a membership at a specific gym, consider Cooleaf, a website that allows you to pick classes from more than seventy clubs and studios around the metro area. The a la carte approach is for those with busy schedules and gym commitment issues. We used Cooleaf to find Bikram yoga classes (we got four classes for $40), but you can also choose from group fitness classes, Pilates, and diet and nutrition. Prices range from $7 to $8 for a single class up to more than $1,000 for an in-home personal trainer.

Speaking of yoga, we’re excited that Passport to Prana, a Toronto-based online firm that sells yoga cards for $30, has come to town. Each card gets you one class at each of the participating yoga studios. Go to all fifteen and that breaks down to just $2 a class! The studios include Kashi Atlanta in Candler Park, Rejuvenate Spas in Downtown, Bikram Yoga in Decatur, and Sacred Garden Yoga in Marietta. cooleaf.com; passporttoprana.com

Cathy Anderson is one of our editorial contributors.
Learn more about her | Follow her on Twitter | Contact her

Five Minutes with Dolvett Quince

Debra Shigley — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 22:19:00 GMT

Dolvett Quince hasn’t exactly been toiling in obscurity; he’s trained stars like Boris Kodjoe and Justin Bieber. But now the longtime Atlanta trainer is helping America get fit, as the newest cast member on NBC’s The Biggest Loser.

Photograph by Ryan Gibson

You’re shown shirtless a lot on Loser. I think a person’s body should be a walking, talking billboard of their task. If the personal trainer doesn’t care about his body, why would you trust me?

So how’d you get the Loser gig? They called my studio and asked if I was interested in coming out to L.A. to audition. I told them I was too busy. Just kidding! The audition wasn’t too difficult; they filmed an episode with me training two former contestants and two other people that hadn’t done the show before.

Your client and friend Bert Weiss [of Q100] has played a role in your success. Ten years ago, I would average maybe two new clients a week—with me having to knock on everyone’s door to sell myself. Then Bert and I became friends, and he started talking about me on his radio show. It jumped to forty to forty-five new clients a week.

Say I have to lose five pounds in a week. What’s Dolvett’s secret? Drink a ton of water. Eat clean. If you usually work out twice a week, work out four times. That’s the real secret: Don’t do the same thing you did before.

What’s the most egregious way you’ve seen a client cheat on his or her diet? I had a client come in the studio with a box of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies. She was eating them in front of me right before her workout.

What’s your go-to cheat meal? The chicken curry at 10 Degrees South. This thing has chicken and bananas and rice . . . oh, it’s delicious. I want some right now.

Witzlib VS. BLAST900

Jackson Reeves — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 00:26:00 GMT

Take a look at how Buckhead fitness newcomer Witzlib measures up against its neighbor and rising heavyweight BLAST900.

Witzlib Fitness Studio

Gym 2833 Peachtree Road, 404-844-9859, witzlibfitnessstudio.com

Schtick Schizophrenia: Indoor cycling. Suspension training. Yoga. Barbells. The studio offers a hodgepodge of courses to appeal to a few dominant trends, with interesting twists (e.g., dynamic yoga).

History Founded by Lisa Witzlib, the studio opened in February 2010. The competitive triathlete and former Chamblee group fitness director wants to cover all her bases.

Class TRX Suspension Training: The studio is best suited to tackle suspension training, in which you use your own body weight against yourself via a hanging apparatus. Think push-ups while standing up. $25 (for any class)

Results When it comes to isolating muscle groups, Witzlib sculpts ’em and wins.

[VIDEO: See Witzlib in action]

BLAST900 The Ultimate Workout

Gym 56 East Andrews Drive, Suite 26, 404-841-5430, blast900.com (second location in Dunwoody)

Schtick Speed: The official term is “interval training,” which means alternating low-intensity work (e.g., lifting weights) with high-intensity work (e.g., running). Their hyperactive regimen promises to burn 900 calories in one hour.

History Missi Wolf (wife of Wolf Camera founder Chuck Wolf) developed the BLAST900 routine while she worked to lose her “baby weight” and began offering courses in September 2008.

Class Blast Full Body: Treadmill activities jump back and forth between jogging and deep paces on a steep incline. Floor activities include crunches and weight-lifting exercises. $28, but the first class is complimentary

Results However, for cardio, BLAST900 takes the cake by helping you lose the fat.

[VIDEO: Go behind the scenes at BLAST900]

Illustration by Jameson Simpson

Lift

Jackson Reeves — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 18:06:00 GMT

The latest and most ab-assaulting workout to arrive in Atlanta is Lift, an exercise class built around the ballet barre. Run by UGA alum Lindsey Daughters and operated out of Buckhead's sleek Terminus Club, Lift derives its moves from Pilates, yoga, and ballet to yield the most refined core workout in town. The hour-long program progresses from gentle mat stretches to strenuous exercises at the barre. Participants lift everything—arms, legs, whole bodies—as Daughters's voice booms around the room: Lift. Lift. Lift. For one routine, I put a leg up on the barre and, with the other, alternated from toe to flat foot and back again—all while maintaining perfect posture: shoulders down, leg straight, everything facing forward, core tightened and activated. And then we did the other side. For the final routines, I could barely hold my legs an inch above the ground, but it paid off. Just one class and my abs looked better than they've looked in a year.

Barre-based workouts have been around since the late fifties, when a German émigré incorporated barre techniques in her London exercise classes. The concept crossed the pond in 1971 and got hot in the early aughts with the openings of San Francisco's Dailey Method and Bar Method; celebrity acolytes include Drew Barrymore. Daughters, who worked on the trading floor at Morgan Stanley, taught courses part time at Dailey after earning her license there. After moving to Atlanta and discovering the city had no such offerings, she opened Lift in April 2009 out of her fiance's Westside home. In March, she used her business savvy to shift the class uptown.

Because each class is capped at twelve people, Daughters can focus on each participant, so even the uninitiated can get up to speed. You don't need Terminus Club membership to get in, but you do need $20—and an outfit from Lululemon Athletica wouldn't hurt. You also don't need two X chromosomes, though flexibility is helpful, and excelling in the course does depend upon that essentially feminine trait of endurance.

Lift is held every Monday and Thursday at 6:15 p.m. and every Saturday at 9:30 a.m. at Terminus Club, 3280 Peachtree Road, Suite 225, 404-567-4947, terminusclub.com.

Illustration by Violet Lemay

Laughter Yoga

Sarah Puckett — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 17:49:00 GMT

Sixty-three-year-old Jean Woodall tried tree-climbing, karate, and trapeze before she discovered laughter yoga and found a thrill that beat them all. She leads a once-a-month class called Laughter for Everyone out of a Unitarian church near Emory, and it’s totally free.

On a rainy Wednesday night, fifteen people sauntered into the meeting room, dropped their umbrellas, and formed a circle. A mix of regulars and newcomers, we introduced ourselves by offering up a staged laugh. Mine was more a squeak and a choke, but nobody judged. “The thing about laughing,” said Woodall, “is you can fake it.” The physical benefits remain. Laughter pumps up endorphins, lowers blood pressure, and burns calories. Dr. William Fry, a Stanford professor who promotes humor as medicine, has likened one minute of laughter to ten minutes on the rowing machine.

Mumbai physician Dr. Madan Kataria held the first laughter yoga session in a park in 1995. Today, Laughter Yoga International maintains a network of more than 6,000 clubs, including Woodall’s. The practice doesn’t actually involve poses but incorporates yogic breathing to harness mental and physical benefits. Woodall took us through an hour of increasingly involved “laughs,” some of which were downright ridiculous but got us perspiring. We channeled our inner primate and scratched our armpits. We wiggled with imaginary ice cubes down our shirts. We scowled until we guffawed. To conclude, we breathed deeply and did some freestyle laughing. Surrounded by unrestrained snorts and giggles, I hardly needed to fake it.

Laughter for Everyone is held on the second Wednesday of each month at 7:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, 1911 Cliff Valley Way, uuca.org. To find other classes in the city, visit laughteryoga.org.

Illustration by Sarah Wilkins

Atlanta Yoga Club

Bill Warhop — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 17:42:00 GMT

It wasn’t a good day for outdoor yoga. Piedmont Park was soggy, the late-morning temperature was an unseasonable 57, and clouds blocked the sun. I arrived early for the Atlanta Yoga Club class, expecting to find it canceled. Yet there on a knoll overlooking Tenth Street sat Lisa Cohen, one of AYC’s certified instructors, cross-legged on her mat and looking very yogic.

The Atlanta Yoga Club, launched in March, is a grassroots organization aimed at getting yoga outside and accessible “for the masses.” Instead of expensive lessons in a strip-mall studio, the club offers open-air sessions in various styles for only $5. The group—which anyone can join through meetup.com—assembles Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday at Piedmont Park and Saturday at John Howell Park. AYC plans to offer classes every day and expand to the burbs (there’s already a satellite session in the Lawrenceville/Suwanee area), but as cofounder Melanie Snyder, who organized the club with her sister Rebekah, says: “You have to start with a core.” And isn’t the core what yoga’s all about?

My inadequacy as a yoga virgin is irrelevant, but I wasn’t alone: At least four of the dozen attendees were first-timers or rookies. Cohen moved among us, lightly tweaking our Vinyasa positions and expounding on the merits of yoga. “I got into this for the yoga butt,” she said, “but when you’re eighty, you’ll just be glad you can pick up the keys when you drop them.” A more practiced and focused yogi wouldn’t have noticed, but as I twisted toward Tenth Street into a wobbly Side Warrior, I was keenly aware of glances from parkgoers and dog walkers. A homeless guy heckled us, but Cohen deftly turned the disruption into a meditation on focusing inward: “The one thing in the world you have control over is your perception,” she waxed philosophically.

So I let my mind drift with the breeze that stirred the dogwood blossoms. Ducks quacked down at the lake. Somewhere a band warmed up their instruments. And during our last Sun Salutation, a ray of sunshine peeked through the clouds and saluted us back. meetup.com/atlantayogaclub

Illustration by Juliette Borda

A Straight Man's Ode to Ansley L.A. Fitness

Charles Bethea — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 17:38:00 GMT

The twenty-first-century gym is a burlesque under bright lights: lathered bodies, spandex, inner-thigh machines, and wall-to-wall mirrors offering intimate angles and startling curves. It follows that these facilities often function as meat markets. The L.A. Fitness at Ansley Mall serves as such for chiseled gay men. But I began going there for a different reason: It’s the closest gym to my house.

As a kid, I bought baseball cards at the ancient Woolworth’s that would eventually make way for the slick-looking gym chain. I was sad to see my childhood haunt disappear, but three years later, after my mother joined, I gave the place a shot. I was back from college, jobless, and capable of forty-five minutes of daily self-improvement. Also, I could walk there. Without quite realizing it, I’d joined a healthy reincarnation of Studio 54; protein powder, chin-up bars, and techno had replaced coke, showgirl swings, and disco. The hot pants and affectionate ass-slapping remained.

It was a shocking place for a straight young man with a pretty face. I felt, for the first time, like a piece of meat. Early on, catching a few furtive looks, I assumed a defensive posture. I’d put my earbuds in, keep my eyes down, and stalk around the back where the free weights are kept, only glancing up at the rare woman—she was a woman, wasn’t she?—who braved the sea of massive, mingling, unseasonably bronzed males.

Why continue this masochistic ritual? Despite my best efforts, I found camaraderie. Sure, it was mostly limited to grunts of “Done here?” “Can I work in?” and “Mind leaving those weights on the bar?” But it felt nice. Nonverbal communities are communities nonetheless.

One day I was benching too much weight without a spotter. I went for an extra repetition and couldn’t push it up all the way. Seeing this, a man wearing a shirt that said “Tight End” came to my rescue. He didn’t look like a football fan. But he helped me extract myself from the vise of my own weighty ambition. When I sat up, my face was beet red—both from oxygen deprivation and embarrassment. “Oh, don’t worry, sweetie,” he said, smiling. “Sometimes a spotter is just a spotter.”

Illustration by Scott Garrett