Add up the number of gym memberships you’ve bought. Now subtract the number you’ve fully used and renewed.
If your answer is zero, stop reading.
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A lot of us trail off about a third of the way in, because Going to the Gym starts to feel like cleaning your gutters or doing your own oil change. But since Adam Zickerman’s Power of Ten introduced the idea of short workouts, carefully calibrated to be even more effective than a long sweaty ordeal, two St. Louis fitness franchises have made “20 minutes” their call to action. One is The Exercise Coach. The other, Twenty Minutes to Fitness, is a lot lower-tech, relying on its trainers and physical therapists’ observation skills.
Twenty Minutes to Fitness
Locations: Clayton and Chesterfield
Method: Slow-cadence strength training, timed not counted
Claim: Scientifically-based methods make it possible to achieve in one weekly 20-minute session what might require three or more hours a week in a traditional fitness center.
The Deal: A free one-hour workout to experience it yourself
The Secret: Workouts customized to be gentle on the joints yet break down muscle fibers, triggering them to rebuild and strengthen
It all started when a St. Louis couple turned on their TV and saw broadcast journalist Barbara Walters (and if your brain just flashed SNL’s “Baba Wawa,” you’re old enough to be losing a little muscle strength each year) doing a super-short workout she could happily fit into her schedule. Laura and Bill Miller flew to New York and consulted with Zickerman until they had the method down. In 2001, they opened Twenty Minutes to Fitness, which uses equipment originally designed for physical therapy and hires PTs, exercise physiologists, and kinesiologists as well as certified fitness coaches.
You don’t buy a membership; you buy sessions (the more you buy at a time, the less they cost). Most people come just once a week. And they don’t work up a sweat.
Mine’s checkered.
“We put people with significant orthopedic issues with our PTs at no extra charge,” she assures me.
Twenty Minutes trainers don’t use computers or count reps; they just watch their clients’ form like a hawk, timing how long it takes for the muscle to fatigue and the movements to become faster or sloppy. “We might see you starting to compensate, knees angling in or out, strain in neck or shoulders, speeding up,” says Breslin. “Ideally the client will just slowly hit a wall, and their muscles will physically get stuck. Or the range of motion will get shorter and shorter. And then we count down a 10-second hold at the end, just to get every last drop out of it. We want the muscles to fatigue in around 2 minutes; that’s how we know to raise or lower the weight.”
Breslin demonstrates on the leg press, and with a certain schaudenfreude I notice that soon into the session, her muscles are shaking. With slow cadence, muscles work far harder, because there’s no momentum propelling the movement. (Strength training does not, by the way, build new muscle cells, the way hot fudge sundaes proliferate my fat cells. Instead, the training thickens the muscle’s fibers, sort of like braiding rope to make it stronger and more durable.) All those days you’re not working out, your muscles are rebuilding themselves.
The soreness, Breslin adds, “should never be the kind of achiness that ruins your day. It should be a good type of soreness”—proof you’ve done something—“and never debilitating. It’s strangely gentle, this workout. Even though you’re working really hard, it’s so slow and controlled that you’re isolating muscles really well, and it really spares the joints.” The MedX equipment is balanced for slow-cadence, she says, “and very smooth. It will change the resistance through the range of motion. And it adjusts for every need you can think of.”
Even the need to fail.
“It’s hard on the ego. Especially for the guys,” she stage-whispers. They don’t like seeing their muscles tremble. “And they don’t expect to have to huff and puff when they are moving so slowly, but the breathing’s a huge part of it. I like to tell everybody, ‘You can just close your eyes. I will talk you through the workout.’ It’s very Zen: We want you to focus on your breathing, focus on your form.
“When someone leaves, they should feel exhilarated, their muscles loose and warm,” she says. “And because it’s such a short amount of time, it’s easy for people to stick with. We have guys who work out in business suits and just loosen their ties. One executive wears her pearls and stiletto heels.”
There are special programs to get extra fit for, say, golf. Me, Breslin guides to the stretching machine, frowning when she sees my limited range of motion. “It’s better after a glass of wine,” I mumble. She shows me a video (only two minutes!) that lists all those benefits I already know yet have done nothing to seek, like a stronger heart. (It’s a muscle, too, and it works harder when you’re taking other muscles to the point of failure.) Less body fat, lower cholesterol, lower insulin levels, lower blood pressure, lower risk of heart disease. Greater lung capacity, faster metabolism, better mood, more flexibility and balance, denser bones (I learned about Twenty Minutes to Fitness from a friend with osteoporosis), and more synovial fluid, lubricating joints that otherwise might be feeling a tiny bit arthritic.
Maybe it’s time to make a little time for all that.
