Is Denver ready for a Fitness Studio with No Seated Equipment? June 30, 2011

Posted by jamieatlas in bonza bodies, boot camp, bootcamp, denver, fitness, personal trainer.
Tags: boot camp denver, fitness 5280, fitness studio denver, personal trainer 5280
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The Fitness Studio at Bonza Bodies in Denver gives out high quality workouts every day.

But there’s nowhere to sit down and do your workout.

As you walk into the small studio, artfully decorated with an Australian Art Mural, Inflatable Kangaroos and sings that read “no swimming, crocodiles’ you realize that this isn’t your standard studio.

In the corner, there’s a set of dumbbells.  And that’s about all the conventional equipment you’ll recognize.  

The Butterfly Machine.. every gym shouldn’t have one

As one member put it:

“This fitness studio has none of the workout equipment I’d expect to see, and all of the stuff I’ve never seen before”

The sad part is, most big gym managers don’t know that there’s a variety of unfamiliar weighted apparatus that you can throw, toss, tilt, shift, twist and generally manipulate to create a warm sensation through your system that usually results in the expulsion of sweat and the a sensation of actual enjoyment during a workout.

It’s called ‘open floor fitness’ - the concept that a room can be an open floor, but in a short jiffy, become a fully functional fitness workout center that taps into muscles you didn’t know you had.  The biggest downfall is also the biggest industry at fitness conferences around the world.  Machines that do the thinking for you.

Conventional machines force people to do what they’ve been doing all day.  Sit.

Why should you sit for your workout when you’ve been sitting all day already?  When you sit, your core immediately starts to wind down in a functional sense.  When was the last time you had to pull something heavy towards you while sitting (not counting asking for seconds at thanksgiving dinner).

If you thought that workouts had to follow a certain set of circuits, I’m here to tell you it just ain’t so.  The reason these machines exist is to make it easier for the trainer and the participant.  Everyone follows the signs on the machine, the personal trainer counts to 12 and everyone goes home happy.

But is that really what it’s all about?  Don’t you want your personal trainer to help you be able to teach that body to play?  To move with exhuberance?  To live life and be able to do things with it?  Chances are, most of those fun things are done from a standing position.

Teach your body to move in the real world by working out like it’s the real world

A workout that helps you do more than push handles at higher intensity doesn’t involve seated machines.  It requires full body integration, movement pattern integration and a constantly changing variety of movements.

If you want a workout that helps you move in the real world, then you want a space that embraces ‘open floor fitness’.

If you want a space that doesn’t require you to think about… well, anything.  Go get your headset, throw on some Pearl Jam and get down with your bench pressing self.

But the question I’m really asking, is this…. I can write about how much people might need a standing workout in an open floor space using different push/pull twisting tools…

but when will we start seeing other clubs refuse to purchase seated equipment?

Will it be at the point clubs want what’s best for the consumer …

or the point when the consumer understands what’s best for their own health and fitness?

Jamie Atlas

www.bonzabodies.com ( It’s not a boot camp like you’ve seen before in that it uses an open space but makes sure every workout contains a large variety of fundamentally different movements using unconventional tools.)

5280 Top Of The Town 2011 – Editors Choice, Best Personal Trainer