For your Wednesday: A few fine fitness reviews!

Hallelujah, it's already mid-week!!!

Long weekends are the gift that keeps on giving: every day for the rest of the week you can enjoy the exquisite pleasure that is thinking it's a day earlier in the week than it is. This continues until Friday when it really is the weekend again. Glorious.

Speaking of a weekends, I had a rather busy one a while back. The clock was ticking for me to complete my 10 classes for my Classtivity Passport, so I decided to take one on a Thursday, two on a Saturday, and one on a Monday morning. I'll review two in this post, and two in an upcoming post!

Thursday night had me ready for anything at As One for its signature As One Effect class. I took a free class with As One founders Mark Merchant and George Vafiades back in Summer 2012, and it kicked. my. butt. I was expecting a similar a$$-whooping workout this time around, and I did not leave disappointed.

The As One Effect class can be best descried as Crossfit-inspired. It was a circuit-style workout with supersets, designed to challenge both aerobic and anaerobic thresholds. There was a focus on back-to-basic strength moves like squats, lunges, pullups, and pushups, as well as some scaled-down, Olympic-style lifts.

After a dynamic warmup, we broke off into smaller groups and had a 50-minute time frame to complete three circuits, each with a set number of exercises and prescribed number of sets. Some of the exercises included assisted pullups, jump squats, pushups, a deadlift-to-upright row combo, Burpees, and sprints on the infamous Airdyne bike. Needless to say, I was a sweaty but exhilarated mess by the end!

Pros: The As One space is reminiscent of a Crossfit box, and lends itself to that same motivating group atmosphere. I found that working out alongside others brought out my competitive side and definitely helped me to push myself. I liked that the coaches walked around and provided helpful cues, and aided us to scale the exercises up or down based on our abilities. I liked that participants can work at their own pace to complete as many reps as possible in the prescribed time frame, and that various exercise modalities were used to challenge our strength, power, and cardiovascular endurance.

Cons: You have to be self-motivated to get the most benefit out of this type of workout; it's really easy to slack off. There's also no time limit per station, which I would have preferred to make me work a little harder to finish as strong as possible. I also thought it would have been helpful to take more time at the beginning to instruct participants on proper form and technique for the exercises. I think the assumption is that participants are already familiar with the exercises because there is an introductory class offered at As One that reviews all this. That being said, I did witness a lot of poor form and people putting themselves at risk of injury.

Overall, I'd give As One Effect a 4/5 stars.
The following Saturday morning after my visit to As One, I made my way uptown west to take a Nalini Method class. Nalini Method was designed by Rupa Mehta, and combines elements of Pilates, yoga, barre, and stretching into one grueling, my-quads-are-on-fire workout!

Immediately upon arrival, I was greeted by Rupa who, I was pleasantly surprised to discover, would be teaching the class. After learning my name and writing it in chalk above the bar station to which I would be assigned, we got down to business. We started with a surprisingly challenging dynamic warm up that fired up the glutes, hamstrings, and quads, and then made our way to the bar for more quadriceps torture. Rep-by-rep, step-by-step, every sneaky pulsing sequence by every other...I swear, I've never feared that my qauds would up and run away in protest more than after those first intense minutes!

Suffice it to say that the rest of the work out--which included suspension-style resistance training using ropes off that bar, abs, and upper body work with weights--was no walk in the park, either! I was sweating up a storm and loving it. I now understand what it took to sculpt Rupa's enviable thighs and backside!

Pros: Rupa's style is very welcoming and motivating. She learned the names of the new students and made sure to call us out during the class to say how well we were doing. The workout in its entirety is truly like nothing I've ever done before because it combines so many different elements. I was not expecting there to be so much cardio involved, but it provided a much-needed respite from the grueling muscle conditioning work that was the foundation of the workout.

Cons: This workout is not for the faint of heart! It's super tough, and don't be surprised if you have to scale some things down your first time. Part of me thought the workout was *almost* too ambitious, as in it combined too many elements to come across as a little schizophrenic. If you prefer your Pilates or your yoga a certain way, this workout is probably not for you!

Overall, however, I'd give Nalini Method 4.5/5 stars simply because it challenged me beyond my expectations, kept me guessing, and gave me a super, total body conditioning workout.