Getting Out of a Fitness Rut – A Gym Rat Tries Athletic Intervals
Getting out of a Fitness Rut – A Gym Rat Tries Athletic Intervals by Dana Waggener
Recently, I read an article online about the biggest mistakes we make in our fitness routines. According to the health editors at MORE Magazine, one of the classic mistakes that smart women make in their fitness routines is doing the same routine all the time (read all 31 tips here). I’ve always known that it’s important to switch it up for better results, but we are all guilty of getting into a “fitness rut”. It’s just so easy to always do the same thing. If you can list out your workout plans for the coming week on a Sunday (GUILTY as charged) it might be time to try something new. After all, variety is the spice of life, right?
So, I devised a personal experiment; try one new fitness class per week that I had never tried before. This posed a challenge for me, ask anyone in the Stonewear offices, I’ve gone to ALOT of fitness classes….Athletic Intervals, Ski Fit, Cycling, Climbing Training Classes (check out Team of 2 Training Online!), Yoga Sculpt… I’ve done it all and more. The Stonewear team will tell you that I’m a Certified, Grade A, Gym Rat.
BUT, there are tons of classes that I’ve never tried. So during the month of April, I tried 4 new classes, one per week, and I have the low-down about each class for you here.
Check out my experience with Barre, Zumba and CrossFit.
Week 4 Athletic Intervals:
My favorite and final class of my month-long fitness class experiment was Athletic Intervals. I took this class at my gym and I’m certain that most gyms across the country have a class with a similar format. Athletic Intervals is sort of like Crossfit, but only for mere mortal humans… It’s an advanced class but there are so many modifications that almost any person at any fitness level could try it.
Athletic Intervals class is a fun way to get a great, hard workout, without dance steps to learn or kipping pull-ups to confuse you. The basic format is one hour of high intensity work in short intervals, which could include anything from running stairs, to Tabata training, to box jumps and much more.
After the first time I went to this class, I was totally hooked – so now I go on a regular basis. The best part of this class is that it’s always different and it always consists of exercises I would probably never do on my own. When I work out on my own, I almost never do walking lunges, or run the stairs, or especially hard exercises like dead-man crawls (plank walk across the gym floor while picking up a barbell ea
ch time you move your hands forward – try it, it’s super hard). We do all of these exercises in Athletic Intervals, it’s the most variety in any fitness class I’ve ever gone to and still feel like I got worked after each class! If you are local to the Colorado Front Range and want to try out Athletic Intervals, go to Stacey’s class on Wednesdays at Lakeshore Athletic Club.
Overall, my little experiment was fun and eye opening – I tried new things, found some I loved, some I hated, and some I’d maybe try out again. The best measure was if I wanted to go to the same class again, which I found with Athletic Intervals. The most important thing is finding variety in your workout and finding something that challenges you, that is fun, and ultimately helps you reach your fitness goals – whatever they might be.
How about you – what you have tried and loved? And hated? Let us know on Twitter @Stonewear.
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