This can’t be right.
That’s my first thought when Cari Allen, the svelt, kinetic owner of Core3 Fitness in Brentwood, tells me to jump my feet, now resting beneath me on the cool, wooden floor, to the back of my surfboard in a plank position.
Your guide to a healthier, happier you
Sign up for the St. Louis Wellness newsletter and get practical tips for a balanced, healthy life in St. Louis.
How will my feet know where to go? What if I miss the board? I wonder, worried. This is my first time on any surfboard, let alone a Surfset Fitness board, which balances on three rubber balls to simulate the instability of a board on water.
The constant motion makes me feel like I’m exercising during an earthquake. I’m terrified of being the first person in one of Allen’s classes to ever flip the board completely over, but with Allen’s reassurance and some deep breaths, I tighten my core muscles, control my balance, and jump. I’m amazed when my feet land naturally in position at the end of the board, and for a minute, I imagine I’m in the ocean, drifting toward a big wave.
Unlike me, Allen isn’t surprised that my body knew what to do even as my mind doubted. She says we don’t give our bodies enough credit for the muscle memory they possess.
“Sometimes we hold ourselves back,” Allen tells me weeks after I take her introductory board class. “We need to take our mind out of it a little bit and just go with it. We all have that inner athlete. It’s just finding a way to tap into that that’s really fun.”
See also: How I Get Fit: Cycling and Yoga with St. Louis Architect Tom Niemeier
As idyllic videos of surfers riding waves plays behind me, Allen guides my class to pop up from our positions, stand on the boards, and rotate to the side, a demanding move that makes my biceps and quads scream.
“That’s exactly the move you would do on the water” while surfing, Allen says. “That functional movement is identical to what you do to get that muscle memory developed for when you’re out on the water.”
Does that mean I’m ready to hang ten after a Core3 class? “Probably not,” Allen admits. “But that muscle memory is going to feel pretty comfortable once you figure out the movement of the water. Your strength and your endurance will be there.”
Our class revolves entirely around the board: paddling, pop-ups, squats, planks. I’m used to the moves on stable land, but performing them on the surfboard makes them feel new again, like I’m tightening muscles I didn’t even know I had.
“Everything we do in there is really based on balance,” Allen says. “You lose that ability to cheat. Just standing or sitting on the board, immediately your whole core has to engage.”
Allen first started surfing on her honeymoon thirteen years ago.
“We live in St. Louis, so I don’t get a lot of opportunity to surf, but whenever we’re in a beachy location, I love to grab a board and catch some waves.”
During a Spanish language immersion trip to Costa Rica, Allen discovered a surf camp that used Surfset Fitness boards for yoga.
“I took a class on the surfboard at this little yoga studio and fell in love,” she remembers.
When Allen returned, she bought one of the boards and started practice teaching out of her basement. The workout caught on, so Allen expanded to Core3 fitness studio in Brentwood, where she combines the surfboard workouts with cycling training on RealRyder bikes and suspension training with TRX bands. Allen says mixing up workouts with moves from all three styles keeps each training session interesting.
“I get bored easily, so I always want to keep new formats rolling in,” Allen says. “We’re still essentially using functional movements from surfing and cycling, but the way we do that get switched up.”
I stuck with paddling rather than pedaling in my first Core3 workout so I could get the hang of the moving board.
“I think there’s nowhere else, there’s no other place where you can dial into your core as well and as fast as standing on an unstable surface,” Allen says. “Having an unstable surface that’s six feet long is incredible because you’re able to do a lot of the movements you wouldn’t do on the floor.”
As I left the class, I could tell Allen’s training had reached deep core muscles that typical weight-lifting workouts on firm land hadn’t. I smiled with pride when I thought about how my body had naturally taken to the movements, even when my mind worried I would tip over. After an hour, I was beyond exhausted, but I smiled as I breathlessly described the workout to a friend: “Hard, but really, really fun.”
Contact Lindsay Toler by an email at [email protected] or on Twitter @StLouisLindsay. For more from St. Louis Magazine, subscribe or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
