Trainer Joseph Hunt is helping New Rochelle residents get in shape one hour at a time at New York Fitness Professionals.
The gym, which opened last year and has since hosted intense boot camp sessions throughout the week, is now accruing a large number of local residents looking to cut the fat for the summer.
You have those late comers just around Memorial Day who say, Holy crap, I havent done a damn thing Im going to be on the beach soon, laughed Rui Mateus, Fitness Director at New York Fitness Professionals.
I started in August of last year, and so far Ive lost 85 pounds, said Vontrell Brown, who originally had plans to have surgery to implant a lapband. On average, five days a week. Its good, people noticed (the weightloss).
During any of the one-hour boot camp sessions, trainees begin with a warm-up. Hip hop music blares over the air as the trainees get ready for their first task: In what looks like a racetrack circle, the eight trainees dodge the rungs of a flattened ladder on the floor, dancing through the squares, heading around the track until they reach five orange hurdles.
They heave and huff over the hurdles until, a few minutes later, a new dance song triggers a new round of exercisesthis time, a strange moonwalk of sorts, where the trainee gets on all fours and rotates lifting his or her opposing arms and legs. And like crazed spiders, they jig about the room. Meanwhile, Hunt claps his hands.
Keep it up, yells Hunt. Keep working, lets go!
If the boot camp were anything like a ship, then Hunts first mate is Matt Dibuono, a possible 2012 Olympic contender in track-and-field. His shouts are heard over the blaring songs.
Stop slacking over there, Dibuono jokes with Brown, who is jump-roping with the power of a Porsche.
Essentially, this is for anyone at any level, but you have some structure as to what youll be doing, said Hunt, who is a co-founder of New York Fitness Professionals, and a previous head trainer at Ballys and other fitness centers.
Hunt monitors the boot camp session wearing a white headband and a white Nike shirt that says JUST DO IT. He dances around the room, overseeing the group that has now taken to one of eight stations one for sit-ups, another for climbing, another for stairs and other beautifully executed weight exercises that leave each of its trainees glistening and cracking smiles.
The trainees at the New York Fitness Professionals twisted as though the Beatles were resurrected in the underground gym. After an hour-long, intense work out, the trainees are drenched in sweat and replacing fluids. The drill instructors congratulate the trainees on another day closer to reaching their goals. For some, the feelings extend far beyond the momentary pleasures of an intense workout.
I feel healthy, said Brown, wiping the sweat from his brow, exhilarated after the long workout.
Im the same size now that I was in high school in 1997.
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