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Lift at Terminus Club

Jackson Reeves
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Lift at Terminus Club
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

Laughter Yoga

Sarah Puckett
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Laughter Yoga
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
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Atlanta Yoga Club
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
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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
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