STYLE of SPORT | Gear & Apparel Curated for the Stylish Sports Enthusiast

TOP RIGHT, HOTWORX FOUNDER STEPHEN SMITH

 
Stephen Smith first began selling gym memberships as an 18-year-old in Mississippi. What started as a career in gym franchising — eventually owning three Gold’s Gyms — evolved into something unexpected. In the mid-1990s, Stephen teamed up with business partner Nancy Price to launch Planet Beach, one of the first tanning salon franchises in the US, which would spawn the creation of the fitness franchise, HOTWORX.

When Planet Beach began, no one was franchising tanning salons and the duo built a booming business. But when the 2008 financial crash hit, followed by the 2010 imposition of a 10% federal tanning tax under the Affordable Care Act, the tanning industry imploded almost overnight. They needed to pivot fast.

In August 2014, on vacation with Nancy and her husband Jerome, an exercise physiologist and former competitive bodybuilder like Stephen, a conversation sparked a game-changing idea. Jerome had been practicing Bikram yoga – discovering the benefits of this hot workout, but found it was too time consuming at 90 minutes. Stephen had recently added infrared saunas to some Planet Beach locations. What if, Jerome wondered aloud, you could practice yoga inside the infrared sauna? Read More

BALLET BODY(TM) BARRE

Barre3, The Bar Method, Pure Barre are just a few of the countless barre fitness studios across the country. Barre classes are very popular sculpt and tone workouts that integrate small isometric movements designed to work muscles to fatigue. Ballet Body(TM) Barre is a very different kind of barre workout.

Developed by former ballerina Roberta Senn, Ballet Body(TM) Barre follows the format of traditional barre classes ballerinas have taken for years to maintain their long and lean physiques and develop the strength required to perform at the highest level. The result is what Senn calls “the most beautiful bodies on the planet.”

Senn was discovered by Jerome Robbins on her very first audition after moving to New York City, who cast her in the original production of Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway in 1964. She left the production a year later to pursue dancing in a ballet company, and spent many years abroad with the Geneva Ballet, Israel Ballet, and Iranian National Ballet (disbanded after the Islamic revolution of 1979). Read More

PILATES MEETS STRENGTH TRAINING AT VAURA PILATES, TOP; RE/GEN METHOD, BOTTOM

 
According to ClassPass, Pilates was the most popular workout of 2023, overtaking strength training as the number one choice of fitness enthusiasts. There are countless Pilates fitness studios across the country — many of which we have featured like SLT, SolidCore, Club Pilates, and Lagree Fitness – with classes on a Pilates reformer machine or a variation thereof. All are slightly different, but at their core is core – core strength that is.

A few new studios have popped up on the fitness landscape like Vaura Pilates and Re/Gen Method that combine the popularity and benefits of Pilates and strength training into one workout. It’s a new approach to Pilates and a new approach to strength training. Though there is an emphasis on core work, core strength alone is not the end goal. Maintaining your stability and form on the Reformer as you slide the platform and pull the straps against the resistance of the spring makes Pilates classes a total body workout. These new classes add weights into the mix for added difficulty and results.

Vaura Pilates is a new Australian import that just opened in NYC, and I took their first class opening day. Billed as an “athletic” Reformer class, Vaura mixes dumbbells, a weighted ball, and the traditional Pilates ring into moves on the Reformer. Every class is different and each teacher encorporates the equipment in their own way. My instructor, for example, integrated upper body dumbbell moves like bicep curls, triceps extensions, and shoulder presses into lower body moves like lunges and squats on the Reformer. Read More