Chaise Fitness NYC Review
I find that one of the best ways to keep myself motivated with my fitness goals is to go with girlfriends, so I grabbed my girl Stephanie to try out the Chaise Fitness class in Flatiron. As you can tell from the photos, things got very interesting pretty quickly. With the incorporation of resistance bands, you're relying on your body weight the entire class - it's an incredible full body workout. There's crunches, leg lifts off the ground and onto the chair, superman's, and more.
PROS: 1) Chaise Fitness is a serious full body workout. Your core has to be on level 1000% for the Chaise Fitness workout to be even semi-effective. But it's a really fun thing to say that you tried!
2) The bathroom (there's only one) is stocked to the brim with any toiletries you'd need - deodorants, sanitary napkins, lotions, facial cleansers, sweat bags for your clothes...you name it, they're there.
CONS: 1) If you're a bigger girl, you become self-aware of your size pretty quickly. Because you are relying on body weight and the resistance only goes up to "4", there were quite a few times I was just standing and moving in place while everyone else exercised. I wouldn't say it was embarrassing because I'm used to being one of the only bigger girls in an exercise room, but it became annoying after a while watching everyone burn calories that I wasn't.
2) The facilities are TIGHT. A couple of women, who are clearly regulars, left the class early to get to the bathroom before everyone else did. There's only one bathroom and the "locker room" area is about half the size of a NYC studio - which isn't saying much. There are two dressing rooms, though. You'd have to arrive way before your class started to ensure that you actually had a locker to put your belongings in. But I will say that it seems like a tight-knit community and I don't imagine too many thefts happen here.
3) I'm not sure if it was an off-night, but the instructor wasn't very helpful at all - he actually seemed to be picking on Stephanie. I'm pretty sure he just left me alone because he knew I couldn't do certain moves, but he barked at Stephanie the entire hour. After class, he said he was doing that because he "knew she could handle it". But, it was our first class and it takes a bit of time just to get used to the mechanics of the chair and resistance bands - let alone doing all of that and doing the exercises correctly!