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It's that time of the week, Friday night, where you want to be out and about, eating, drinking and doing fun things, so naturally we chose to go to a group workout class - F45 Training ("F45"). F45 was found by our mates from the Down Under (insert our "athletic" Australian accent) in 2012. The F45 Co-CEOs sought to create a Group-Training facility that featured the most dynamic and effective training styles to date. Not only did they seek to find the best types of workouts, but they wanted to find a way to vary those workouts every day and make them accessible to the masses. They envisioned highly-capable, charismatic instructors to lead the workouts to motivate people to reach their potential. The "F" stands for functional training and the "45" stands for the approximate length of each class.
If you've read our second post - Time For a Switch ("Switch Playground" or "Switch"), you may have drawn some parellels between the two classes. Both classes (in our opinion) does a good job of keeping your body guessing by performing various movements at a high intensity level and firing off your different muscle groups. That said, F45 feels more like your cross fit gym with a openness feel to it and Switch injects certain gadgets (i.e. smoke machine and live DJ) to create a certain club-esque feel to the workout (though F45 does have a DJ on Saturdays).
F45 offers few many different style of classes, so you should definitely check'em out on its website, under "Workouts". We did the Flamingo: Athletica ( a 45-minute cardio focused session featuring varieties of HIIT). We took 3 Athletica classes (based on the generous two week special) and were pleased that they felt completely different each time, will definitely keep you from getting bored.
Time to drop our ratings on this class:
Motivation (3.5) - Our session consisted of 3 trainers, one of them was the owner of this location. The session started with the trainers providing demonstrations of the different workouts, which we thought were helpful. Further, there were TV monitors on the wall that provided additional guidance of the different exercises if you happen to be lost. That said, we wished the trainers were to do more during the workouts; while they did a good job of trying to pump people up with the "you can do it!" type of chants, we thought they could've guided people more with their forms and approaches.
Amenities (3.8) - Believe it or not, we do take this rating category pretty seriously and we did debate a fair amount regarding the rating we should give for F45. The controversial aspect of this rating rooted from the lockers without a lock, which we had a different view on. Ultimately, we decided that the overall amenities package provided by F45 gym does sufficiently offset that no lock on the locker aspect. The locker rooms do have LARGE fluffly towels and 3 showers if you are looking to run to work after. The restrooms and core training facilities were well kept and equipped with everything you need to get a good workout experience.
Intensity (4.0) - Not to over belabor the point regarding the correct forms when performing different exercise, but given how short of intervals each exercises are (20 seconds with 10 seconds break in between sets or 45 seconds with 15 seconds rest), we thought having the correct form when performing these exercises are critical to optimize your workout and maximize the intensity level. Overall, the exercises themselves will definitely give you a good run for your money, but if the trainers were more keened on people's forms and movements, we thought the session could've been even more engaging, providing more tangible results.
Overall (3.7) - We both thought the class had a lot of potential, however there were some hiccups in midst of the workout. For instance, the malfunction of the TV monitors which led to the trainers miscounting the number of sets and cutting off (several times) the cycles prematurely. All in all, we did enjoy all the different workouts featured in our session and we did appreciate the breadth of exercises offered in our session. Giving how new this location of F45 is, we hope the gym can smooth out these wrinkles quickly and realize its true potential.
Class Location:
F45 Training Flatiron
123 W. 20th St. (1E)
New York, NY 10011
- L&L
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