For the record, I’m no fan of gym classes. The airless rooms, the harsh lighting, the sea of Lululemon pants—better for me the solitary, meditative practice of running. But after years of five-days-a-week jogs, ennui was setting in. So when a friend told me about a hilarious new class set to music from Glee, I had to try it. And it wasn’t half-bad. In fact, it was as taxing as a 5K race (only with more Cee Lo). As it turns out, the city’s gyms have been rolling out a barrage of classes that collectively represent the new norm in fitness: hybrids of old and new routines; high-intensity interval-training sessions; and odd variations on Jane Fonda–style aerobics. Armed with a Mio Motiva Petite— a heart-rate and calorie-counting watch that would tell me (approximately) how hard I was working—I set out to take as many classes in a month as I could handle. These are the twenty I liked best.
SoulBands
SoulCycle, 103 Warren St., at West St.; 212-406-1300; $32 per class
Regular spinning is intense, no question. Spinning, plus upper-body-strengthening resistance bands—plus a Bell Biv DeVoe–infused soundtrack—is intensely satisfying from head to toe. Fifteen minutes into the SoulBands class, my shirt was nearly soaked through. My legs were in near-constant motion, and as I pulled on the bands anchored above the bike, my entire body was, too: Obliques, hard-to-reach lats, and oft-ignored back muscles even got their share of burn.
Minutes: 60
Peak Heart Rate: 162
Calories Burned: 438
The Pain-O-Meter: 1
(Assessed on a 1-to-10 scale, with 1 being pure fun and 10 pure suffering)
Bollywood Dance
Eastern Athletic Clubs, 43 Clark St., nr. Hicks St., Brooklyn Heights; 718-625-0500; free for members, $25 for day pass
My adrenaline, and the music, didn’t stop pumping for this entire hour of fast, high-energy barefoot choreography—a mixture of Indian classical, folk dance, and hip-hop. Instructor Sam Ghosh’s Bollywood-melodrama patter added a strangely lyrical narrative to our steps. During our knees-up-hands-slashing-an-X progression, he chanted: “You think I won’t cut you? There, I just cut you.”
Minutes: 60
Peak Heart Rate: 164
Calories Burned: 451
The Pain-O-Meter: 7
Motivational Sculpt
Clay Health Club, 25 W. 14th St., nr. Fifth Ave.; 212-206-9200; memberships from $130 per month
Jillian Wright, a sculpted motivational speaker who supposedly once weighed 225 pounds, does wonders for people who don’t mind nearly constant “inspirational” pronouncements, underscored with careful manipulation of lights and music. For me, it all made the grunty, gritty work of body sculpting more palatable. Instead of cursing silently on my umpteenth back lunge while holding a twelve-pound bar, I junked my negativity. Wright reminded us that perfection wasn’t the goal, only “honest effort.” A little touchy-feely? Yes, but the hour went by as fast as one spent watching Oprah.
Minutes: 60
Peak Heart Rate: 146
Calories Burned: 219
The Pain-O-Meter: 4
Float
Reebok Sports Club/NY, 160 Columbus Ave., at 67th St.; 212-362-6800; $25 for members (memberships from $209 per month)
Float, a blend of aerial acrobatics, Pilates, and yoga, certainly looks effortless. In reality, there’s nothing easy about balancing aloft on a silky sling “hammock” suspended three feet from the floor. Arms and shoulders burn every time you pull yourself up into the hammock; thighs tremble as you stand with one leg slung up behind you. Even hanging upside down takes work; relax too much and forget to engage your stomach, you might fall.
Minutes: 60
Peak Heart Rate: 148
Calories Burned: 390
The Pain-O-Meter: 5
Trivia Training
New York Sports Club, 113 E. 23rd St., at Park Ave.; 212-982-4400; free for members, $30 for 30 days
Two things learned in this boot-camp-meets-Jeopardy! class: Competition gets your adrenaline going; also, I watch too much TV. We were divided into two groups and, depending on which team answered questions correctly, performed exercises that were either tiring (fast jumping jacks) or rapidly exhausting (squat-and-jump combos). I scored with this question: In which sitcom was Fear Factor host and comedian Joe Rogan a regular? (Answer: NewsRadio.)
Minutes: 45
Peak Heart Rate: 152
Calories Burned: 284
The Pain-O-Meter: 2
Burlesque Workout
New York Sports Club, 61 W. 62nd St., nr. Broadway; 212-265-0995; free for members, $30 for 30 days
Burlesque is all about the slow tease, so how much cardio can one get from shimmying your shoulders and wiggling your hips? Quite a bit, it turns out. Dancer Johnnie Paolillo had us repeatedly practicing a fast-paced, hip-hop- and jazz-inflected choreography with signature bump-and-grind moves. After my initial self-consciousness dissipated—and how could it not with all the feel-good whooping going on?—I was strutting, sashaying, and sweating with a gusto that would have made Cher proud.
Minutes: 60
Peak Heart Rate: 154
Calories Burned: 344
The Pain-O-Meter: 2
Break Beat Gymnastics
Field House at Chelsea Piers, Pier 62 Chelsea Piers, West Side Hwy. nr. 23rd St.; 212-336-6500; $19
Talk about shocking your body out of complacency: Break Beat Gymnastics turned this uptight runner into a break-dancing fool, attempting sweeps (hands on floor, swooping the legs around), CC Rocks (twisting on the floor, one leg extended), and windmills (let your imagination run wild). Even the warm-ups were, um, unfamiliar: I can’t remember the last time I shuffled crablike over a springy floor.
Minutes: 90
Peak Heart Rate: 160
Calories Burned: 355
The Pain-O-Meter: 7
Fight Club
DavidBartonGym, 215 W. 23rd St., nr. Seventh Ave.; 212-414-2022; memberships from $120 per month
The first rule of Fight Club—this Fight Club, anyway—is not to get intimidated about being the wimpiest-looking person in the class. “Always push and never stop,” said fight coach Robert Ramsey, who asked only for “what the body can do.” A typically relentless progression: 30 jumping jacks, 30 push-ups, 30 leg lifts, and 30 jump squats. We alternated punches, reverse lunges, sit-ups, and roundhouse kicks that elicited, from me and plenty of others, a satisfying look-what-I-can-do grunt.
Minutes: 60
Peak Heart Rate: 162
Calories Burned: 395
The Pain-O-Meter: 8
Core Fusion Cardio
Exhale, 150 Central Park S., nr. Sixth Ave.; 212-249-3000; $35, $160 for five classes
A beautiful room filled with beautiful people gave me just enough motivation to get through this notoriously intense class. (Give it your all, I told myself, and you’ll look like them.) A more extreme version of basic core fusion, which blends the Lotte Berk Method with yoga and Pilates, the class mixes strength training and gluteal work with innumerable sets of “mountain climbers” (a push-up-knee-pump move), punches, and side-twisting push-ups.
Minutes: 60
Peak Heart Rate: 148
Calories Burned: 328
The Pain-O-Meter: 6
Flybarre
Flywheel Sports, 39 W. 21st St., nr. Fifth Ave.; 212-242-9433; $30, $135 for five classes
Flybarre’s goal is to open spinners’ bodies, which spend a lot of time scrunched over bikes, with exercises inspired by yoga, Lotte Berk, and lacrosse. (FlyBarre director Kate Bohner was a Division I college player.) The idea is to exhaust the muscles by both stretching and flexing them. I found myself constantly comparing my form against my class-neighbor, who seemed to do everything more gracefully than I did.
Minutes: 60
Peak Heart Rate: 148
Calories Burned: 227
The Pain-O-Meter: 5
Glee Club
Crunch, 144 W. 38th St., nr. Sixth Ave.; 212-869-7788; $35 for day pass
After each Tuesday-night Glee episode, instructors devise one or two new routines for Gleeks to dance and, yes, sing to. The warbling serves two actual exercise purposes: It helps modulate breathing, and it distracts you from the fact that you’re running out of steam. (Cee Lo’s “Forget You” was unremitting sliding and booty-shaking.) Lea Michele’s plummeting weight suddenly makes sense.
Minutes: 60
Peak Heart Rate: 152
Calories Burned: 337
The Pain-O-Meter: 3
Power Hit
Edge, 403 E. 91st St., nr. First Ave., fourth fl.; 212-722-0076; memberships from $79 per month
Power hit starts with twice-weekly one-on-one sessions with Denis Barry or one of his trainers, who run you through free-weight “super sets.” (One progression: 55 pounds on the incline press; eight burpees, in which you jump and land pushing out into a plank; and fifteen hanging leg raises.) After being put through the paces—my regimen included five super-sets with increasingly heavy weights— I could barely hail a cab. But, oh, the feeling of accomplishment!
Minutes: 60
Peak Heart Rate: 164
Calories Burned: 327
The Pain-O-Meter: 9
Forza
Equinox, 344 Amsterdam Ave., at 76th St.; 212-496-2374; memberships from $145 per month
“You control the sword; the sword doesn’t control you,” intoned heavily biceped instructor Omar. After wielding a pound-and-a-half wooden samurai sword for fifteen minutes, I could feel my upper arms and back submit to fatigue, but I was still channeling Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. Two-thirds through the class, my shoulders were ready to give up. By the time it was over, I was panting.
Minutes: 60
Peak Heart Rate: 148
Calories Burned: 302
The Pain-O-Meter: 6
Ballet Beautiful
Various locations and online at balletbeautiful.com; $40, $450 for twelve classes
I was too tomboyish and scrappy as a child to do ballet, so this was my first brush with the stuff. And it was anything but easy. Devised by former New York City Ballet dancer Mary Helen Bowers (she trained Natalie Portman for Black Swan), the class strengthens and limbers the body through ballet-based movements. While it wasn’t a regular cardio-class sweatfest, the graceful sequences, like lunging forward in a turned-out position in five sets of ten, targeted spots I don’t ordinarily reach.
Minutes: 60
Peak Heart Rate: 144
Calories Burned: 223
The Pain-O-Meter: 4
Rope Burn
DavidBartonGym, 4 Astor Pl., nr. Lafayette St.; 212-505-6800; memberships from $120 per month
My heart rate climbed to God-help-me territory after just five minutes of rope-jumping, and that’s where it stayed, save for water breaks. We started by skipping rope (clumsily, for me) for a full minute, gradually inching up to two, and interspersing each set with push-ups, squats, and sit-ups. Though I sometimes dropped the rope in frustration, it was still a sweaty, satisfying workout.
Minutes: 45
Peak Heart Rate: 168
Calories Burned: 332
The Pain-O-Meter: 10
Bar Hoppin’
Crunch, 554 Second Ave., at 31st St.; 212-545-9757; free for members, $35 for day pass
When this trampolining class officially rolls out later this month, don’t expect child’s play. I assumed the mini-trampoline would do most of the work, but controlled “rebounding,” as the instructors call it, forces you to persistently tighten your abs and work your glutes, hamstrings, calves, and ankles. Bottom line: This is real exercise, even if you’re smiling goofily while you’re doing it.
Minutes: 45
Peak Heart Rate: 148
Calories Burned: 268
The Pain-O-Meter: 4
Band Camp
David Kirsch Wellness Co., 210 Fifth Ave., at 25th St.; 212-683-1836; $30
The class relies on a seemingly simple prop, the resistance band, to approximate heftier, more intimidating gym equipment. With my legs lunging or plié-ing and hands clutching both ends of the band, I went through a whole range of motions, with the bands in nearly constant resistance the entire class.
Minutes: 45
Peak Heart Rate: 158
Calories Burned: 175
The Pain-O-Meter: 5
Tabata 2010
Equinox, 2465 Broadway, at 92nd St.; 212-799-1818; memberships from $145 per month
The 2010 in the name doesn’t refer to the year but the intervals forming the workout: twenty seconds of full-throttle exercising using medicine balls or steps, followed by ten seconds of recovery. It’s based on studies by Japanese researcher Izumi Tabata that found that high-intensity interval training burned fat for more time than the long-and-steady approach (i.e., my daily runs). It certainly felt like it, because my heart was pounding nonstop.
Minutes: 45
Peak Heart Rate: 168
Calories Burned: 388
The Pain-O-Meter: 8
Cheerleading
Smart Workout, 124 E. 40th St., nr. Lexington Ave.; 212-661-1660; memberships from $145 per month
Kudos to all you cheerleaders: I hadn’t appreciated how much strength and stamina all that jubilation entails. This class set me straight with tight movements performed with lots of staccato snap. We worked our lower halves with kicks and grapevines and our arms and shoulders by making lots of V’s and T’s. (Novice that I was, I had to ask what they stood for: victory and team.)
Minutes: 45
Peak Heart Rate: 142
Calories Burned: 231
The Pain-O-Meter: 3
Zenergy
The Sports Club/LA, 330 E. 61st St., nr. First Ave.; 212-355-5100; memberships from $209 per month
Zenergy is a true hybrid: It starts with a foundation clearly rooted in yoga, working the entire body with familiar asanas (postures) like warrior, triangle, and tabletop. Interspersed among them, though, are hops, leaps, and lunges that amped up my heart rate, plus strengthening exercises such as push-ups and rolls. By the end of the class, my thighs, calves, and ankles were spent, but I also felt limber, as if I’d stretched the entire hour.
Minutes: 45
Peak Heart Rate: 162
Calories Burned: 250
The Pain-O-Meter: 4