Every student remembers that one teacher who stood out. The one whose passion, excitement and commitment motivated and inspired. The one who pushed when pushing was needed, made an hour of the day the only place you wanted to be, and didn’t throw you under (or off) the bus if you were having a rough day.
For me, that teacher existed inside of a gym, ten years ago. I first met Melissa Rector when she joined the Bally’s Total Fitness team in 2004. I had been a member of that gym for almost ten years by that point, and had gone through a slew of group fitness classes, personal trainers, instructors and bad fashion choices. When I caught wind that a new group class teacher was heading in to amp things up, I was the first in line to sign up. And after one workout with her, I was hooked. She was loud, lively, motivating, driven and genuinely excited about both fitness and her participants.
A couple years after Melissa began there and about halfway through my first pregnancy, I went into gym hiatus and had to part ways, hoping to reunite again someday. While I followed her whereabouts throughout the years, I kept exchanging barbells for babies and it wasn’t until this month that I finally saw her smiling face again, as I walked through the doors of Fore Court Racquet and Fitness, where she is the group fitness director, and set myself up for her Les Mills Body Pump class.
Fore Court Racquet and Fitness, a family-owned business of 42 years, not only provides a full range of tennis lessons, leagues and courts, but also offers other recreational racquet sports, obstacle course training, and a state-of-the-art fitness and health center, which boasts 50 group classes a week, certified personal trainers, and child care. Les Mills, a 24-year-old New Zealand based fitness brand of ten sci- entifically tested pre-choreographed workouts, is taught at over 70,000 clubs worldwide – Fore Court being the only gym in Rhode Island to offer seven out of the ten workouts.
Of the seven, I chose Body Pump, because of its reminiscence to a class Me- lissa once taught at Bally’s, (except it’s the more modern, more kick-ass version). The 60-minute workout uses all of your muscle groups, as you perform weighted exercises like squats, presses, lifts, curls and cleans, for a total of 800 reps. (Like, as in, almost 1,000). When I walked into the extremely large group fitness room, I noticed two things. The room was gigantic (in case I didn’t already just say that) and there were a ton of people, of all ages, setting up for class. The crowd was no surprise to me, knowing the instructor’s teaching style and the type of class it was – one that guides weightlifting in a non-intimidating, fun environment.
Setting up a stepper (to serve as a mini bench) and a bar with various weighted plates on standby to switch out as we moved through each body part, I was once again faced with doing math when I noticed everything was marked in kilograms, and not pounds. By now, you may think I’d have this down, since kilos go with athletic training like peanut but- ter goes with jelly, but I am a creature of habit (and born of the bodybuilding world), so I honestly had no idea what I was throwing on that bar as we moved quickly between sets. I just knew that if it felt heavy enough, I was rolling with it. (And my quads today tell me that it was heavy enough.)
After our warmup, we stacked on our weight and started with squats. Sixteen hundred thousand of them. The idea behind this workout is that you don’t stop (except for one small break half- way through) for minutes straight, while varying the tempo of whatever exercise you’re doing. The muscle burn is palpable, even without any weight added, and is also why you use less poundage (or kilogram-age) than you would typically in smaller, breakable sets in a weight room at a gym. By the end of the full set, you want to throw that bar down on the ground like you want to throw a rock at your ex-boyfriend. But once you quickly regain use of your limbs, you can’t wait to pick it back up.
We ran through all of our body parts with the same style – from chest presses and tricep work to deadlifts and cleans, presses and rows, biceps and shoulders, and even more dread- ed lunge work for the legs. Melissa was fantastic at guiding form, playing great music, pushing you past the threshold and telling funny jokes in between. This class is so perfectly suited for any seasoned fitness enthusiast who wants an incredible workout, and also for those who are maybe new to lifting weights or don’t enjoy doing it in a main gym room. I know that I loved this style of class ten years ago, when I was newer to the weight-lifting world, and I loved it this past week, when I took those weights and pumped out endless reps to leave every piece of me burning and shaking.
Not only did I get a fantastic workout, but I was also beyond excited to reconnect with a woman whose passion for what she does has always made her stand out. Body Pump is one of the seven heart-pumping Les Mills workouts offered at Fore Court, and I’d gladly head back to test out the rest.
Fore Court Complete Racquet and Fitness Club
44 Cray Street, Cumberland
333-4480
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here