I wrote the following story for the Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer in Raleigh; it appeared in both newspapers on Sept. 20, 2011. It appears here in expanded form, with links. Check out yesterday’s post for a first-hand account of the CXWORX class

If you don’t like the lineup of group exercise classes at your health club, wait a month or two. Odds are you’ll see some new options.

The reason: group exercise classes are “experiencing phenomenal growth,” according to the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association, and fitness clubs trying to weather a flabby economy are doing what they can to keep their sweaty members happy. In the case of the increasingly popular group exercise classes, that means mixing up the classes to keep members from growing bored. (For more on group exercise class trends and other industry trends for 2011 identified by the IHRSA, go here.)

“We gauge interest by tracking attendance,” says Andrea Greene, fitness director of the YWCA of Charlotte.  “If it looks like a class is not succeeding, we’ll modify it or drop it.”

Hence, come October the Charlotte YWCA will add 11 new classes to its group exercise lineup, including kickboxing, a body sculpting class and a triathlon instruction class.

“Being a small facility we have the ability to create new classes, to be flexible and change,” Greene says of their significant lineup change.

According to the IHRSA, which represents more than 10,000 clubs worldwide, interest in cardio kickboxing classes alone spiked by more 20 percent from 2008-2009, high-impact aerobics classes grew by 8.1 percent and low-impact aerobics classes were up 6.3 percent.

“We’re always looking at new options,” says Liz Church, who manages the Lifestyle Family Fitness clubs in Apex and Cary.

This practice of swapping out classes follows emerging science that doing the same exercise over and over offers diminishing rewards — and can be harmful. “Mixing up your routine will avoid overworking one particular muscle group or joint,” according to the Mayo Clinic. The Mayo Clinic, the American Council on Exercise, the National Institutes of Health and the American College of Sports Medicine, among others, tout the benefits of cross-training.

Sometimes, a new class may simply be new to a particular club. Cardio kickboxing, for example, has been around for more than a decade.

Sometimes, new classes are exercise mash-ups: different combinations of exercise staples. Bally Total Fitness with two Charlotte clubs, has introduced KWANDO, “an intense cardiovascular and strength conditioning class that incorporates movements derived from boxing, tae kwon do, and karate.” O2 Fitness in Raleigh has “Chisel,” which taps kickboxing and plyometric exercises, while new 20/20/20 classes employ three 20-minute segments of aerobic and strength training exercises that change from class to class.

Greene with the Charlotte YWCA says her clubs decides on new classes by monitoring trends in fitness magazines, keeping tabs on what the various instructor certification agencies are offering, listening to instructors and to members.

“If we hear about a great boot camp, we’ll try to bring it here,” says Greene. One new class that the Charlotte YWCA is investigating: Nia, which describes itself as “sensory-based movement” that appears to borrow from various dance forms and the martial arts.

Some new classes (Zumba) catch on and develop a cult-like following. Others (yoga with your dog) do not.

Sometimes, new classes appear to break new ground — or at least advance an emerging fitness concept.

In March, Les Mills International, which develops fitness programs and certifies instructors, unveiled CX30 (also marketed as CXWORX). The intense 30-minute class is based on research by Jinger Gottschall, an assistant professor of kinesiology at Pennsylvania State University (who is also a Les Mills-certified instructor). Gottschall put 10 men and 10 women through a series of exercises that worked their “sling” muscles, those muscles connecting the upper and lower body. Her objective: To see whether these extended exercises (the plank, for instance) were more effective than those that simply concentrated on the body’s core (crunches). In a paper presented in June to the American College of Sports Medicine, she concluded they were.

“We wanted to see if we could achieve activation across the core when we added the shoulders and hips into a movement … ” Gottschall said in a statement through Les Mills. “In fact, the integrated activity was much higher than expected.”

Gold’s Gym and O2 Fitness quickly picked up the CX30 class, and earlier this month it was added to the Triangle Lifestyle Family Fitness group exercise lineup.

If suffering is any indication, the new class is a success.

In her second time teaching the class at the Cary Lifestyle Family Fitness, instructor Nancy Nickel looked out at the 15 women and two men trying to mimic her movements and said through her headset, “You did not like that one. I can see it on your faces. It’s pure hatred.”

Afterward, 40-year-old Heather Austin from Moncure, a veteran of group exercise classes, gave CXWORX a thumbs up — for its effectiveness and its brevity.

“I like that it’s quick,” said Austin. “I do 30 minutes of this, I do another 30 minutes of cardio and I’m done with it.”

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Something other than hiking that will build your strength, build your cardio, I answered. I ran through a litany of options, from riding a bike, to taking a yoga class to lifting weights. But I missed some obvious ones. Like work in the yard. Two things reminded me of that option.

First, a new study out of Kingston, Ontario’s Queen’s University reiterating that all kinds of activity provide good cardiorespiratory fitness, from simply taking the stairs at work, to vacuuming your rumpus room, to weeding your garden.

In the study, “inactive, abdominally obese men and women” were assessed for IPA (“incidental physical activity”), LPA (“light physical activity”) and MPA (“moderate physical activity”) for their CRF (“cardiorespiratory fitness”). I could sedate you with the footnotes, formulas and numbers in the thousandths reported in of the study; rather, suffice it to say simply that “both duration and intensity of IPA were positively associated with CRF among inactive, abdominally obese adults.” Even more simply said: People who become more active in their day-to-day lives — by mopping the floor, by mowing the lawn, by cleaning the attic — improved their cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF).

I was further reminded of the benefits of IPA cross-training when I worked in the yard for five hours on Sunday. I still ache in places that don’t get touched on a hike.

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Back in the spring, Andy Cole would have been happy to just keep up with his 5-year-old and almost 2-year-old at the local playground, let alone squat-lift 285 pounds and run two miles without stopping.

The 43-year-old Pineville resident’s slide into tubbydom was a familiar one: Participate in sports in high school (basketball and football); graduate from college; get a job; get married; have kids; gain 100 pounds.

“I went for 20 years doing no exercise at all,” says Cole, whose nearly 6-foot frame was carrying 300 pounds.

Then in April his neighbors turned him on to the magic bullet – an exercise program that did what countless gyms could not.

Sounds like the stuff of late-night TV paid programming, but in fact it dates back to the “days of the Olympic decathlons and pentathlons of ancient Greece,” according to the American Council on Exercise.

This latest exercise phenomenon? Cross-training, or simply not doing the same exercise over and over until you’re tired, bored and on the verge of debilitating injury. Cross-training is, for example, walking or running one day, doing yoga the next, maybe lifting weights the day after that.

In Cole’s case, he enrolled in a rapidly growing international network of gyms built on the fundamentals of cross-training: CrossFit. In Charlotte, CrossFit has grown from two gyms two years ago to eight.

“The workouts vary from day to day; it’s pretty much never the same thing,” says Brandon Cullen, who owns CrossFit Ballantyne, the gym where Cole works out. “We stress full-body functional movements. We’re not working on machines; we’re not lifting in front of mirrors. We’re not reading Us Weekly on the elliptical.”

CrossFit Ballantyne is in an abandoned warehouse, so you might get the impression that cross-training is for aspiring Navy SEALS. It’s not, says Cullen. Unless you want it to be.

If a workout calls for pull-ups, Cullen says, a veteran exerciser might do unvarnished pull-ups, while a newbie could use big rubber bands to lessen the load.

That was critical for Cole when he first walked into CrossFit Ballantyne in April.

“I was a 300-pound guy who hadn’t been exercising in 20 years,” he recalls. He needed that giant rubber band (“I couldn’t do one pull-up”), and that day’s two-mile run involved more walking than running.

But the environment was supportive – classes are small and victories of all sizes are reported on the gym’s blog and Facebook page – and not knowing what he’d be doing when he walked in the door every day kept his interest. Three months have passed, Cole has lost 35 of those 100 post-college pounds, he can squat-lift 285 pounds and he’s more like the Andy Cole he was in high school.

“I can see my body firming up, my chest [and] my arms are stronger and my midsection is tightening up,” Cole says. He’s also doing a better job of keeping up with his energetic kids. All of which contributes to his ultimate endorsement of cross-training and CrossFit.

He says, “I’m a happier person than I was three months ago.”

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It helped Josh Handest train for a half marathon. It was even more instrumental in getting him into shape to keep up with his preschool sons.

“My 4-year-old likes being picked up and tossed around,” says the 36-year-old North Raleigh resident. “And the 5-month-old is in a car carrier that gets heavier and heavier to get in and out of the car.”

Functional fitness for daily living and a workout regimen that helps runners and other competitive athletes perform better – all in one! Sounds like the stuff of late-night TV paid-programming, but in fact it dates back to the “days of the Olympic decathlons and pentathlons of ancient Greece,” according to the American Council on Exercise.

This latest exercise phenomenon? Cross-training, or simply not doing the same exercise over and over until you’re tired, bored and on the verge of debilitating injury. It is, for example, walking or running one day, doing yoga the next, maybe lifting weights the day after that.

“It’s like diversifying your portfolio,” says George Whitten, who with his wife Stephanie owns the Fitness4Life Training Center in North Raleigh. “You need to have that balance.”

Fitness4Life embraces the cross-training ethos, offering classes, from cardio kickboxing to karate to XFit to boot camp. Clients pay a monthly fee of $49 and can attend any class – and as many classes – as they want.
Handest signed on when he started having joint pain while training for a half marathon. Mixing in regular cardio kickboxing and boot-camp-type classes improved his overall body strength and allowed him to cut back on pavement-pounding miles. The real plus, though, was the extra energy and strength for surviving his boys.

“I can tear around with them now,” Handest says.

Katy Hijack of Raleigh dabbled with personal trainers and gyms to help with her running. The former proved too pricey, the latter, with traditional classes, didn’t seem to help. When she ran her first marathon last fall – the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington – she felt awful. Her takeaway from the race:
“If you run 26.2 miles, it’s not just about your legs,” she says. “You do use your upper body.”

She joined Fitness4Life, started taking cardio kickboxing and XFit classes, both of which involve exercises for developing strength, flexibility and aerobic capacity. Already, she says, she feels better prepared for her rematch with the Marine Corps Marathon this October.

“My core [midsection] is stronger, my lower back isn’t sore and my legs are stronger,” she says.
Whitten says another attraction of cross-training programs is that not only do they also work for both accomplished athletes and folks coming off the couch but they allow the two populations to work out together.

“Everything we do is scalable,” he says. By that he means if a particular routine calls for pull-ups, a class veteran may do classic pull-ups while a newcomer may use a lower bar, allowing him to get a little push off the floor.

The variety and the scalability are important, Whitten says. Above all, though, he says, cross-training is fun, the way exercise was when we were using all our muscles to run through the woods, to climb trees, to swim at the neighborhood pool. A successful exercise program, he believes, boils down to one thing.

“We need to feel childlike again.”

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