Orange Theory: Preston Hollow

Layout

If you hate the color orange, don't bother checking this place out.  They adhere to the theme very strongly. Everything is orange, and in many different shades as well.  You have the front desk area,

that has all the swag you could want.  They also have cubby holes and two single, but very nice, bathrooms. I believe they also have a shower, but I only caught a glimpse of it.

After you enter through the front desk area you then, when it's your class's time, go through some glass doors into the exercise area.  The exercise area is in a L-shape (at least at this location). In the longer part of the L there is a row of treadmills lined up and facing the wall, a row of rowers behind them.  In the short leg is the strength area, a rack of dumbbells, and small mats, and TRX suspension ropes.  Very clean and very new.  I really liked the treadmills in that they were easy on my feet, very soft and had some bounce, which was nice for my shin splints.  The rowing ergs are the kind that use water for resistance, like what Frank Underwood uses.  I didn't like that I couldn't adjust the resistance.  That made it difficult to raise my heart rate (which is very important in this class), but otherwise excellent machines.

Class experience

This is really similar to Beyond 500 in that both are circuit training that put you in a group that goes from one station to the next.  Beyond 500 seemed to be a bit more focused on pilates type movements while Orange Theory (OT) is focused more on conditioning. OT's focus on making your heart stronger makes sense because the whole deal with Orangetheory, the basis for it's very name, is that the program is designed to keep your heart rate in the 85-92% max rate, aka the "orange zone".  Doing this for an hour is supposed to help burn the most calories.

So how do you know if you're in the orange zone? Well, you wear a hear rate monitor of course! To participate in an OT class, you have to wear one of their heart rate monitors.  They multiple TVs in the room that show everyone's name with their heart rate below them.  So whenever you look up you will see your name and your heart rate, with the corresponding color (grey, blue, green, orange, and red).  You actually do have anonymity in this situation, provided no one knows your name.  However, you do see how you're doing relative to the group, so that can give you that competitive edge to drive you.

The first class I attended our instructor had us divide up into two groups, the treadmill group and the strength/erg group.  For the first 30 minutes the same group is on the treadmills, while the erg group switches out with the strength group after short periods of time.  The whole time things are changing, for the treads they're changing incline and speed, same with the ergs.  The strength group cycles through various exercises, as many rounds as possible.

It was fun to push myself, to try to get my heart rate up.  It is strange, when the instructor said that "alright you're supposed to feel uncomfortable here", it really made it easy to embrace the discomfort of pushing myself.  I have to say I enjoyed the class, this program.

Surfability

This is pretty easy to surf. You sign up for your free first class.  As a bonus, if you wait a week or so they'll offer you a second class for free as well.

The Gym of Social Mechanics

Right on Greenville, this place is in a happening location.  Sporting the converted space look that I love so much (Garage doors and exposed brick), this is a hip place as well.   Surrounded by tattoo parlors and trendy restaurants like HG supply company, it makes sense that the people that work out here are also young, hip, and tatted up.  I should point out that by no means does this group feel exclusive, everyone I talked to was friendly and open. I do feel the need to point out though that if tattoos and lulu lemon are your thing, then this is the place to be.

So what is the gym of social mechanics? SM purports itself to be a safer take on CrossFit.  They claim that their workouts consist of all the safe exercises of crossfit, without any of the dangerous ones.  So you get all the camaraderie and workout-induced high of a crossfit WOD, without those pesky trips to the doctor.  Sounds like a great idea right? Well, it is a great idea, but whoever programs the workouts here does not have a complete grasp of what exercises are dangerous, as was demonstrated by my first workout here.

MET-CON DAY

My first day I came in on a Tuesday, which is when they usually do their metabolic conditioning exercises. For those that don't know what metabolic conditioning is, it's a workout where you move light-medium weights around for higher reps and for longer periods of time (10-20 minutes).

During this metabolic conditioning exercise we did sumo deadlift kettle bell high-pulls (SDHP), box jumps (tons of box jumps), toes to bar or knees to chest, and wall balls. I was really surprised that they tout themselves as safer than CrossFit because those first three exercises are some of the most dangerous exercises in Crossfit. 

First, the SDHP.  It's been well known for YEARS in the crossfit community that SDHP’s can potentially hurt your shoulder, specifically the supraspinatus.  Don’t believe me? I’m not offended, but if you are interested here are four posts about why the SDHP can easily cause a shoulder impingement that puts your supraspinatus at risk, making it a stupid exercise. And yet, SM’s “safer programming” for that day was chock-full of SDHP’s.  But enough of that, let’s go to another dangerous, and misused exercise: the box jump.

The box jump was originally used as a nice finisher after hard workouts; it was also originally a depth jump. For example, you do your workout, and at the end you do like 6 (AT MOST) reps where you jump from one box, onto the ground, and using the body’s plyometric abilities, bounce back up to another box.  Here is a vid of Dwayne Wade using this technique.  The box jump (jumping from the ground up onto the box without first jumping down off of a box) as it has now become popular, is just bad news in high reps.  A single box jump can be a great test/demonstration of power and agility. If you can jump onto a box as high as yourself then you are quite the athlete.

GHDs, something else that can
be really dangerous if you
don't know what you're doing

But to try to jump somewhat high over and over and over again is just asking for a badly scraped shin at best or a blown Achilles tendon at worst.  The dangers of high rep box jumps has been pretty well documented  (and made fun of); I don’t understand where Social Mechanic can think that doing like a hundred box jumps in a workout is safe for anyone. Hell, I missed a jump myself and almost got hit in the head by fellow box-jumper.

So that leads us to the last exercise in the workout: kipping toes to chest.

It’s not the knees to chest that is so bad, it’s the kipping action that is the element of danger.  The kipping action is dangerous because it is easy to do incorrectly.  Kipping pull-ups is If you don’t have a lot of shoulder strength and you perform the kipping mechanic, it exposes the joint to all types of damage. Kipping knees to chest does the same thing.

Steven Low, writer of an awesome exercise blog, has chimed in on this subject matter as well.  Concerning SLAP tears, he says: 

The reason why you don't seen the top CF athletes getting slap lesions is because their shoulder mobility sucks. If your shoulder mobility sucks when you relax your shoulder muscles at the bottom of the pullup you have your muscles contracting against opening the shoulder all the way thus mitigating any forces on the biceps long head tendon. In addition, the muscles do help bar forces from the shoulder.

However, when you get people who are weak (e.g. women in general, or those with good shoulder mobility) they're the ones getting the primary forces distributed through the muscles into the other soft tissues such as the long head of the biceps. This is especially the case with learning the kipping pullups where there's going to be a lot of jerking down into the motion while learning it.

I would never ever ever ever recommending learning kipping before you at least have 3+ deadhang pullups. It's not just not a good idea putting trauma on the shoulder especially when it's easy to not do it right and jerking down into the movement which is much more dangerous than a smooth movement.

Jerking down from toes to bar can do the same thing for reference.

Someone else has eloquently described what is going on with the kipping motion:

Just imagine the "peel-back" force in the shoulders when they are forcefully wrenched back at the apex/reversal point of the kip. If you really think about it, the head of the humerus is trying to push out the front of the glenohumeral (shoulder) joint, the kipper is trying to RELAX their muscles at the bottom to get the most out of their kip, leaving all the strain on the LABRUM (think of it as a suction cup on the scapula that holds the humerus on the body, with the greatest forces on the top/superior and the front/anterior parts), and the resultant forces--over time (repetition)--TEAR the TOP part of the labrum from the FRONT to the BACK...this is therefore a SUPERIOR LABRUM ANTERIOR-POSTERIOR injury mechanism, almost perfectly designed (as evidenced by the orthopedic doctors making a ton of money off of people who do them).

There's also another article here by Whole 9 that basically sends the same message of do dead hangs before working on the kip. Crossfit Virtuosity also recently mentions how important it is to have strict pull ups before you start kipping (and provides a great program to get strict pull ups).

So yeah, kipping anything can be dangerous for your shoulder if you don’t have the technique or strength.

To sum it all up: this place can offer up some dangerous exercises if you’re not careful and aware of the dangers.

STRENGTH DAY

Afterwards I was told that they usually do a strength workout on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays, so I decided to come in again and see how it works on strength days. I was curious as to how different their strength day is from their met-con day.  …That and I still didn’t have a car and they were within walking distance.

So the workout was 5-5-5-5 of hang clean.  The instructor said we could take as much time as we wanted between sets, so I was pumped.  I usually take 2-3 minutes of rest between sets when the lifting gets heavy, and my moderate goal was to have the last set be 185#.

However, I never got to that weight because everyone else rushed through their sets, leaving me as the last lifter standing, so I ended on my third set.  I was a little disappointed because it seemed that no one was really interested in trying to lift as heavy as they could.  Maybe they were following some template I was unaware of, but I don’t think so.

Following the strength part was yet another metcon, a variation of Cindy: 10 rounds of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, and 15 squats.  So really the main focus here is the met-con again, with a little strength on the side.

So all in all I don’t see how this gym is really any different than your normal crossfit gym except for the fact that they don’t do snatches and clean and jerks. (although apparently they do hang cleans).  As a big fan of Olympic lifting I’m a little disappointed that they threw the baby (Oly lifting) out with the bath water (high reps Oly lifting), especially when they decided to leave a tub of acid (kipping, SDHP, and Box jumps) lying around.

Days in: 143

Money spent: $10

Beyond 500

OMG THEY R PLAYING KE$HA THIS IS MY JAM BRING IT ON I AM KILLING IT RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!

*Takes deep breath*


So there's a new Beyond 500 location on Henderson and to promote it they are offering free classes throughout the week.  So I decided to give it a try.  

Because I work at home I tend to work out at around noon so I signed up for the noon class. This means that I tend to work out with women.  I don't know why but it's very rare to find guys working out at noon.  Well, that and this is group exercise not named crossfit so it's rare to find guys. So as usual I was the only dude in the class. This doesn't usually bother me I mean everybody is always so focused on their own individual suffering that they're not paying attention to anybody else. However, I do feel a little out of place while waiting before class starts.

But if you are a woman and like wearing lululemon, you'll fit right in here.

Facilities/Layout

No power cord needed.

This place has lots of light through the windows, yet it's kind of dark inside.  They have track lighting throughout and exposed ducts, so it's a very urban feel.  There is a line of treadmills facing a wall of mirrors and then two rows of pilates benches behind the treadmills. 

Their treadmills are actually really cool. They don't require any electricity or anything it's basically a inclined loop so the closer you are to the front the faster it goes. It's really ingenious.  However, I didn't know that getting onto the machine and almost fell down because when I first stepped on it I stepped on the high part so it immediately started to take off.  There was a bit of a learning curve, but once I figured it out though it was actually pretty cool.

Classes

This place is basically guided group circuit training.  The instructor divided us up into three different groups and before he started the workout he explained what each group was doing while demo'ing the movements.

People prepping before class

The template was to work at each station for a five minutes.  We had a one minute break between stations and we did each station three times. For example, I started out on the treadmill, then I moved on to a Pilates bench and did three different movements (10 reps a set) and then when time is up I moved to the third station which was working with the kettle bells.  There is did three different movements, all in sets of ten.

The instructor turns on some mad beats, started the timer, and we were off to the races.  Throughout the workout the instructor is talking through his headset, reminding us of what we are supposed to be doing so you're never really at a loss of what to do.

It was kind of funny working out with all these women in that all the settings and weights were set for somebody who is much smaller than myself. The assistance spring on the board probably was probably set for somebody who weighs 100 pounds less than me. So all the board work was pretty darn difficult, felt like I had no help whatsoever.  Also, the kettle bells only went up to 26 pounds which is pretty light for me (I'm used to 56# KB swings). So that part of the circuit was where I took some rest.

The treadmill, however, was where I was able to really push myself.  Thanks to the sprinting classes I'm taking I actually have pretty good sprinting technique right now I was able to go really fast and that wore me out pretty quick.  However, the jelly-bean shape of the surface really made it difficult to work on striking the ground by punching it with my forefoot.  The same of the treadmill lends itself to a heel strike, which I find unnatural and hard on my heals.  This class made me realize how much I need to work on conditioning.

Surfability

So I lucked out on this in that they are offering free classes on their opening week. Their intro rate is $15 for the first class, which is higher then say surf fitness that offers $20 for two weeks of unlimited classes.  I just take this as an example of always looking for opening gyms who will usually offer some type of opening special.

So if you want to work on some of your conditioning do some light resistance work beyond 500 is a pretty good class. Personally, I don't enjoy the these RAMP IT UP BEAST MODE type of classes where the music is blaring from the speakers. That doesn't really amp me up that just hurts my ears and makes me cringe.  Obviously this is just a personal preference thing but I thought I should note that for anybody who is interested.  So if you like working out with others to the heavy beats of some pop song redone this is the place for you.

Days in: 76
Amount paid: $0

LA Fitness - Signature Club

Tried out a big chain this week with LA fitness. They only offer a three day pass, but that's enough for me to lift two days with a yoga class in between.

I think this encapsulates the
crowd here on a Saturday nicely.

This is mostly a young professional crowd, which makes sense given its uptown location.  I happened to come in during meat head hour.  There were tons of guys wearing tank tops to show off their guns and full sleeve tattoos.  The guy to girl ratio was like 20:1, which is nothing really atypical. The gym bunnies I saw were dressed more to work out than to been seen. This was different from the trophy wives I saw at Equinox. 

I actually saw a douche doing dips without his shirt on. He wasn't even facing the mirror so it was for pure show.  Not my cup of tea.  There are also some older bodybuilders here. I would imagine they enjoy showing off to the young crowd and feed off the young energy.  I know I would if I were in their shoes.

When the sales rep was giving me the tour I commented on how nicely laid out the hundred of dumbells were.  He smiled and nodded his head, saying he was OCD.  I almost responded with "You'd love lifetime athletic then". Thankfully I caught myself.  I have to be careful now, don't want them to realize I'm up to something.

Layout/Facilities

The gym is a signature series club, which is their upscale club.  What this means is they offer fancier equipment. The guy told me they have the latest models in machines.  Honestly I don't see how one chest press machine is different from another but whatever.  The actual gym is also twice as big as a normal LA fitness.  For example, they have 50 spin machines and three TRX suspension cages.

The rowing machine and the Squash
courts and the cardio machines.

They also have the fanciest rowing erg I've ever used, the thing was very... different in the cable's tension; it felt more realistic. I want to take this opportunity to apologize for the poor photography. I don't feel comfortable with taking pictures in a gym. I mean, people are self-conscious as it is, and I don't want to make it worse.

 The gym also has a saltwater pool, which is only rivaled by Equinox.  There is also a nice large hot tub, but when I was there it was unavailable as it awaited repair.

I was also impressed with the number of squat racks they had (5!!!!).  When I showed up in prime lifting time (12:30 on a Saturday) I was able to find an abandoned rack.  The douche who used it before couldn't have been bothered to re-rack his weights.  I get the feeling this is a common occurrence in this gym. They also have five bench racks, but they were being used, causing me to wait for over four minutes for one to clear up.

Cheap(er) protein.

I was a little sad to see they did not have any bumper plates, but this very much feels like your typical globo gym that focuses more on isolation exercises than compound lifts.  Nothing wrong with that, it's just not what I personally am looking for in a gym.

There is also a basketball court on the second floor, which I was told was very popular for pick up games.  They also have a group fitness room that is very nice. mirrors on two walls and punching bags lining another one.

A nice bonus here is the juice bar.  They sell protein on the cheap here.  They sell dented bins here at discounts. I think this is a great idea. I mean, if the container is still sealed, then what does it matter if the container is shaped differently? I guess people like their things perfect.

Classes

Only attended one Yoga class here. It was exactly what I needed, a peaceful, relaxing stretch one.  As we listened to Kenny G's rendition of "my heart will go on" the male instructor did a very good job of setting up clear instructions. Nothing was hard to follow. Honestly I liked this one more than the one at Equinox, but I'm not a yogi who does standing splits.  The class was a nice size, quite a few people but no where near crowded.  Lots of women as would be expected. Perhaps they all hide up in the cardio floor

For the yoga room, they have a stack of nice mats but no disinfectant wipes, so I would bring your own mat. I was kind of surprised that this isn't something that is required to be provided. At Equinox everyone just tosses them into a box to be cleaned by the staff (You know, the other half). 

Surfability

It's low pressure, but I don't like the sales tactics used here.  They ask me reasonable questions like "what other gyms are you looking at" and then disparage the gyms that I list. Like I said "24 hour fitness" and the first salesman was like "that place is disgusting" and I told the lead salesman "Tom Landry" and he responded with "well if you like working out with old people then enjoy".  I don't like how they feel the need to bring down other gyms.  Instead, just talk about how your gym is better. Let your product speak for itself.  Unless, of course, you don't think your gym is better.

....When I mentioned that one reason why I was hesitating was because they didn't have bumper plates. The lead salesman said "Well you won't find gyms with bumper plates."

"Oh yeah Tom Landry has bumper plates AND a real platform. So does Equinox."

"Yeah but Tom Landry only has one platform"

Really? That's your response??? One platform is, mathematically, infinitely more than zero platforms. It is also, in my mind, infinitely better.  Just own up to the fact that your gym might not be the best fit and move on. You'll get a lot better opinion of potential customers.

Days in: 32

Amount paid: $0

I should mention now that I'm a month in that I've made a spreadsheet of all the gyms I'm aware of here in Dallas, and I think I can go for another 14 weeks just using trial memberships, that's four months of working out for free.  Also, if I can somehow stretch this out to six months I can start over with a lot of gyms because they only allow trials every six months.  Once I'm out of the free trials I plan to switch over to introductory rates, like the 30 days for $30 promotions you see every once in a while.

UPDATE:

So I've spent an additional two weeks here thanks to a special my apartment was running, and I thought I could add a little more insight as to what it is like working out here.  Regarding the equipment, I don't have too much more to say, but I do have a better idea of who goes here during the 11am-1pm section of the day.

When compared to the other gyms I've been to, the most unique thing here is the number of women working out.  There are a lot of them here. And I'm not talking about cardio queens riding the elliptical up on the second floor (I don't go up there so I have no idea). I'm talking about women doing real, honest-to-God resistance training. As I'm typing this out on my phone there are five women in the weight section doing: lat pull downs, bicep curls, sumo squats, leg press, and deadlifts. Plus, they are doing this all on their own, without a trainer.  So hot.

They aren't really dressed to strut their shit, they are dressed to perform.  However, to a male lifter nothing is hotter than a woman who understands the value of resistance training and isn't afraid of doing something with weights that aren't in neon colors. It's like a gamer who notices a girl playing League of Legends. You've found someone who has similar tastes and values as you do.  To me, a woman who isn't afraid to do heavy resistance training is a sign of confidence and someone who values their health.  Someone who understands the empowerment that comes along with knowing you are strong.  Also, I can't think of a hotter combination than yoga pants and squats.

There was one girl who was doing actual squats (not a half-rep Harriet), and I overhear her talking to a guy, in an eastern European accent, about how she was getting back into competition shape again. So yeah, there are some female competitors (in what I don't know) who lift here.

Other than that, I also really appreciate the cheap protein and shakes/smoothies they offer here. Generally, I think of smoothies and whey protein as  an inferior replacement for a steak and sweet potato hash.  They are called supplements, not necessities, for a reason.  However,  the convenience of being able to have something immediately after your workout can be really nice sometimes when you are in a rush.

Even though I won't be signing up here, I will continue to buy the cheap protein here. What costs $70 and GNC costs half that here.  They have even cheaper prices than amazon or ebay.

A Tribe Called Sprinters

I must preface this review with the fact that I am now a full-blown member, pay my dues and everything. I figure this is a testament to the product that they are able to provide this cheapskate.
So I've been interested in getting into sprinting for a while now. I want to feel fast, but I don't like running more than the straight section of a high school track (however long that is). I was looking through crossfit gym websites to find out when they offer a free class and I stumbled upon the fact that some coaches have their own sprinting group: A Tribe Called Sprinters. And more importantly, they offer a free class on Sundays!

I can personally attest that you don't need any track experience to join. The only kind of running I've tried is long distance like a 5k or 40 minutes on the treadmill. This experience, however, was much more enjoyable and entertaining. Running for 10+ minutes is boring, but doing a different drill ever few minutes or so is very entertaining.

Prepping for the day's workout.

The coaches are very knowledgable, and extremely friendly. There is no bootcamp vibe to this at all. The coaches view it as playing, and I think it really comes off that way. They will usually have hip hop music blaring throughout the class so it also feels a little bit like a party. Be careful of Crystal though, she will hug you.

This class will focus on "fast-twitch training" which means you won't be doing anything close to jogging. They will be working on explosiveness, and explosiveness is what makes a person athletic. This training feels more focused than a crossfit program, where you kind of try to be decent at everything. I much rather prefer this focused approach. Become explosive, become athletic, worry about your 40m time, not your 5k time.

To summarize an average Sunday class, they start with warming up with various drills that are brief but sometimes intense. First they usually have you do some exercises with a band around your knees in order to activate the glutes. After that, they usually do some type of technique drills. For example, they'll have you do the A-skip, B-skip, and the like for 20 meters. None of this lasts long, it only takes a couple seconds to cross 20 meters, but as the exercises get more intense you definitely get more winded. After doing 50 minutes of warm up, it usually ends with either a relay race or actual sprinting like 50 meters. And then you're done.
Recognizing that the Sunday class is open to all, they usually refrain from doing drills that are too technical.

The Sunday class usually takes place on the SMU track (though my free class was at Hillcrest Highschool), and in the summer time running outdoors in Dallas can get really hot. But they usually provide a cooler of water/gatorade so if you forget to bring water you won't have heat stroke. This class is nice in that you just need a pair of running shoes. Track spikes are usually not asked for and are never needed. The Sunday class, since its focus is more on mobility/conditioning work, never asks for spikes to be worn.  

This is a very friendly group and the coaches really do their best to be kind of silly/goofy so to help you feel relaxed. At the end of the class, they have this circle cheer/chant that helps build camaraderie, and really helps you feel like a part of a team.

I think everyone should try this one out, it's pretty awesome.

Days in: 19
Amount paid: $0