This workout will strip the boredom from your exercise routine
By Jennifer Dulin
Tucked away in the basement of P.E.C. Studios on Manchester, students, housewives and grandmothers watch attentively as their instructor, Kay Allen, seductively rolls her hips in demonstration of her latest knock-his-socks-off cardio-strip routine. “Come on, ladies! Let me see you work it!” Allen encourages a room full of wannabe strippers. Lisa Ferrise feels as if she’s been cast to star in the movie Striptease and does not fit the part. But her fear slowly turns to pleasure as she nails one stripper move after another, letting her hands teasingly trace her body’s every curve.
This new “sexercise”—a combination of aerobics, dance and striptease moves—incorporates sensuality into group exercise, and women are swearing by its results.
Susie Fredman, a 46-year-old mother of four, says, “You get to live out a fantasy—and do something you never thought you would be able to do.”
That kind of confidence is what distinguishes cardio strip from calisthenics, says P.E.C. owner Hannah Van Derson: “It is complete freedom of movement and expression.”
A trial session in March drew 15 students; now, regulars fill the studio every Monday at 8 p.m. They polish their skills, using chairs and stools as props and stage names to complete the transformation.
“Once we start dancing, we don’t stop,” says Allen. “It’s a hot class.”
Although predictably slow to hit the Midwest, cardio striptease has been a craze on the coasts for several years. Actress Sheila Kelley teaches an “S Factor” striptease class in Los Angeles that’s grown to 45 sessions a week—from beginning to pole tricking and lap dancing—and the 500-or-so students include Teri Hatcher, Christina Applegate and Lucy Liu.
Allen is inspired. “Once I get 20 regulars in the class,” she says, “we’re going to put in some poles. That’s when the fun will really start.”
