Go vs. Show
The latest technology in functional-fitness equipment

By Rebecca Heaton

Photo courtesy Lakeshore Sthletic Club Brian Cooper trains Lakeshore Athletic Club member Erin Gaarder on the Free Motion Split Stance Chest Press.

But with cooler weather and less daylight, this is the time of year when more people venture back inside to their local health club or recreation center for a workout. So what is happening with equipment these days to keep people challenged and entertained when they’re indoors?

For the most part, free weights and isolated-movement machines are still in fashion. Visit a club or rec center and you’ll likely see a line of machines by such big names as Nautilus or Cybex. As equipment evolves, though, the past few years have revealed a new trend called “functional fitness” and the development of specific equipment to go with it.

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“Functional fitness is all about building muscles for go versus show,” explains Alan Couzens, director of personal training at the Lakeshore Athletic Club-Flatiron in Broomfield. The Flatiron club is host to FreeMotion, a line of equipment whose cables, rotating arms, sliding branches and multiple hand attachments allow a user to move in all directions. The club is one of the few in the country to stock all nine pieces of the line.

“Unlike more standard machines, which are built to average dimensions [of a person], FreeMotion machines can accommodate all different sizes,” says Couzens. “The setup allows a user to move more freely and thus mimic most any movement, whether it be for sport or for real life.” For example, a baseball or tennis player, even a golfer, can mimic a swing while holding onto a weighted cable. Or anyone can imitate movements as basic as leaning over to pick up a child or a bag of groceries.

RallySport Health & Fitness Club in Boulder has also recognized the relevance of functional fitness with the recent addition of a new line of equipment called Kinesis. Like FreeMotion, Kinesis is movement based, offering more functional resistance-based training where a user can move freely in three dimensions compared to the two-dimensional constraints of more standard cable-and-pulley machines.

Unlike traditional machines as well as some FreeMotion pieces, Kinesis has no seat to sit on, so a user must move around—lunging, squatting and twisting while at the same time maintaining balance and holding onto the weighted handles. This forces one to work a range of muscle groups all at once, which translates to training for real-life “functional” movements.

Keep Those Joints Moving

“What makes the Kinesis equipment so spectacular is that it trains movement in an integrated versus isolated way,” says Erin Carson, general manager at Rally. “And as we age, functional movement is incredibly important to keep our bodies and our joints constantly moving.” This fall, Rally became the first club in Colorado—one of just 49 nationwide—to introduce the line, installing four (from a total of 12) pieces.

Both Couzens and Carson point out that users should seek the help of a trainer when learning the different exercises. “With some of our other equipment, such as our Nautilus machines, a user will have an easier time figuring out how to do an exercise because the machine’s movement and setup is more controlled,” Couzens says. “But our FreeMotion machines do away with that ‘safety’ factor because they have multiple pivot points, which requires more supervision and knowledge from a trainer on how to use them properly and effectively.”

At Rally, Carson says, members are only allowed to use the Kinesis equipment under the supervision of a personal traine, in either an individual session or a Kinesis-specific class. The machines even have their own room in the club’s recently created private training area. “Because these machines are free moving compared to our other equipment, the pieces challenge one’s balance and joint stability more, and there’s more of a degree of risk and challenge,” Carson says. But, she adds, “Our members like to be challenged.”

Another club that’s jumping on the functional-fitness bandwagon is Boulder One Fitness, a new club slated to open in early January. Owners Glen Marshman and Scott Woodard, who decided to close their respective clubs (Body Balance and Boulder Pulse) at year’s end and merge to create a brand-new, larger club, have selected FreeMotion as one of their equipment lines.

“We’ve handpicked pieces from a couple different lines,” says Marshman. “Both Scott and I have been in the industry for some time—I’ve been training for about 32 years—and our philosophy behind our equipment choices comes from personal experience and what we’ve used in the past that we’re comfortable with.” Marshman says that he likes the adjustability of FreeMotion pieces.

But functional fitness hasn’t completely dwarfed other form of training. Recreation centers and clubs, including those mentioned above, still host standard weight- and strength-training machines that many clubgoers are fam-iliar with. Lakeshore Athletic Club, for example, is a showroom for the ever-evolving Nautilus line. The club also hosts a number of pieces from a company called Strive, whose equipment features a special cam lever that a user can adjust to increase or decrease tension through the range of motion of the exercise.

At Rally, Technogym (which also makes Kinesis) is the line of choice. “While it’s twice the price of some other lines, we bought Technogym because of its high quality and ease of use,” says Carson. And at One Boulder Fitness, Marshman says he’s picked out pieces from companies such as Cybex and TuffStuff.

Along with all of the more techy equipment, basic free weights, fitness balls, exercise bands and balance boards are ever-present stalwarts, offering further avenues for mixing up one’s training. “People get bored, so the more toys they have to train with, the better,” says Couzens.

Health club memberships are at an all-time high around the country, according to a recent study from American Sports Data, and Colorado is in second place, with 20.1 percent of people aged 6 and older as members of a club. Recreation centers and health clubs will have to work constantly on ways to keep their members happy and challenged. It’s clear that a number of them in Boulder County are already on track. l


Rebecca Heaton is the editor of Rocky Mountain Sports magazine, based in Denver. She contributes to a number of other regional sports and fitness publications around the country, including Competitor and Windy City Sports. Her favorite gym toy? Free weights.