Boston Fitness Freak

So this week, I came to the realization that I am a fitness masochist. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure this out – the more (good) pain a class causes me, the happier I am. I’ve been working out at a high intensity level for just about 7 years now, so these days it takes a lot for me to really feel a workout the day after. Generally, my body recovers pretty quickly

This realization ties in quite nicely to the 2nd of my “can’t miss” classes. It’s always nice to find like-minded individuals in this crazy world. And every Saturday at 11:30 AM, a large group of fitness masochists show up at Exhale for the Advanced Core Fusion® class with Denise Crowe.

There are hard classes, and then there is this class. We all joke around that Denise tries her best to kill us during our hour, but it’s kind of not a joke. For that reason, this is the class I look forward to the most all week (and I know a lot of my classmates feel the same way). It is so nice, in a society (both inside and outside the fitness world) where coddling is the norm (at least in my humble opinion), to be pushed up to and past perceived limitations. It’s also nice that this class is limited to students who have taken at least ten (10) Core Fusion® classes – since Core Fusion® (CF) is a class that flows best when everyone knows what they’re doing.

Every week I stroll in to take this class with my community of friends at Exhale (the real place in Boston where everybody knows your name) – most of us know each other, which is fun because we’re all comfortable enough to be expressive through the pain (a fly on the wall would hear a lot of groaning, begging, and the occasional outburst of what I affectionately refer to as, “CF Tourettes”). And when I say pain, I mean agonistic pain that can be brought on from the brutal arm work (the alleged “warm up”), seemingly endless thigh work, advanced glute variations and more vigorous curl variations than one would be subjected to in an Open CF class.

The funny thing is, when I talk to people who take the Open CF classes, they always wonder, “it’s already hard, how the heck do they make it harder?!!” I think that question can really only be answered by experiencing the Advanced CF class for oneself. All I can say is that if I’m still sore on Tuesday from a class I took Saturday (which routinely happens), they definitely find a way to make it harder

I’d also be remiss not to go into more detail about what an amazing teacher Denise is. One of the most thorough and knowledgeable teachers I’ve ever had the privilege to learn from, she is all business about kicking the snot out of us but really nice (and funny) at the same time (she says she’s never killed anyone during a class, but some of us have our doubts!) She also NEVER loses count of the reps, which is great in a class like CF. We are extremely lucky at Exhale Boston to have someone of her experience and stature running the show. She is just so good at not just helping people understand the various positions in CF, but helping them get the most out of each position that they possibly can.

So I’m in Chicago for work for the next few days (the one place on earth with worse weather than Boston right now). . .I’ll be hitting up Exhale Chicago for sure (CF creator Elisabeth Halfpapp is teaching there tonight), and barring any horrific weather will be in my spot for CF on Saturday at 11:30 at Exhale Boston!

Tags: Exhale Spa, Mind Body

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 9:21 am and is filed under Mind Body. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.