Metro Fitness Club

While Brad took his parents over to the new/old house yesterday morning, I had other plans on the agenda.  Metro Fitness Club, a new gym in the Myer’s Park neighborhood of Charlotte, invited some other bloggers and I to tour and try-out their new facility.

I’m currently in the market for a gym membership, so I was excited to give this new gym a try.  But let’s be honest here, I like doing new things, so even if I had a gym membership right now, I would have still jumped at the change to tour a new swank facility and get beat up by their trainers.

The staff at Metro made all of us feel very welcomed.

I loved the art they had all over the facility!  They plan to have a rotating collection featuring local artists, available for purchase.  I wish I could talk Brad into submitting some of his work, but he likes to draw for friends and family, not for purchase.  I’m pretty lucky that I get to reap the benefits of a talented and artistic husband. 🙂

We chatted for a few minutes when we arrived, then headed into the gym to get busy.

Metro organizes their workout equipment by muscle group.  I like that feature a lot.  It’s too easy to overlook machines when they’re all jumbled up in no systematic order.

Lot’sa treadmills….I like what I’m seeing.  Nobody likes to wait for a treadmill when they’re ready to go.

The trainers made sure we knew we were there, not only to get a tour, but also to exercise.  They explained our workout as a sampling of Crossfit, which combines weightlifting, sprinting, and gymnastics.  Our first challenge featured these props plus a few more.  We had 15 minutes to do as many of these circuits as we possibly could.

-250 meters of rowing (on rowing machines)
-10 step ups or hop ups (I opted for step-ups since I’m incredibly short and worked my legs out plenty yesterday )
-10 ball throw/squats – we held a beach ball-size weighted ball, squatted until our butts touched another ball, then upon rising, we threw the ball in our hands up in the air, bounced it off the wall, then caught it = 1 rep

I felt good during this part of our training, working up a really good sweat and getting through 6 1/2 circuits.

However, this thing kicked my tail.  All of the exercises involved in this adult jungle gym were very strength-oriented.  I’ve said more than once that my strength training since coming back from the honeymoon has been less than consistent..who am I kidding: less than existent…and I really struggled with some of these things.  I would love to try it again when I have not ran 14 miles the day prior to see if I was really exhausted or just really out of shape.  My bet is on the latter.  It made me a little sad to know that I’ve slacked off in this department.  But maybe this little wake up call is just what I needed to motivate me to get back into strength training.  I made so much progress before the wedding and I would love to be back there again…and soon.

One of the strength heavy exercises: use your legs to pull the ropes and this contraption toward you a little bit at a time.

Part three involved three different exercises, each of which were done for two minutes:
-holding a plank, elevating each limb, one at a time
-running drills around an aerobics step
-mountain climbers on these really slippery white pads with black slippers on our feet to make it more slippery

There was a splattering of sweat on the floor when I began the mountain climbers.   I turned that splattering into a pool.

I don’t think I was the only one who was so happy when this last circuit was over.

Metro hooked us up with some great swag, which I’ll show you later.

The whole gang: Me, Brittney, Katie, CassandraJen, and Nicole (who gets cool points for rocking a UNC shirt :)) By the way we kicked ECU’s tail today at football 42-17 – Go Heels!

I love their marketing strategy, but I love anything that involves cookies.

Eat me.

After a sweaty butt-kicking Crossfit session with Metro’s trainers, the fitness club graciously provided lunch at Zoë’s Kitchen.

We earned it.