By Chrissy Iley
If I can think of a class I’d be least likely to be drawn to, it’s one with lots of cardio and weights and then lots more. The crossfit trend is very macho, I like more pilates or barre. I like Psycle mainly because it’s in the dark and they play good music.
Anyway, that’s not how I ended up in the orange place. My friend Kevin and I used to have a regime of going up the road to Crunch in West Hollywood. We had been very lacking in our regime for some time but Kevin said it was urgent we started four times a week again. Crunch were happy to see Kevin but told me I had cancelled my membership which I had not.
There was lots of arguing and then I was told I’d have to rejoin and see a manager. It would only take five minutes. You know how there is no five minutes, particularly in gyms? Five minutes on rowing machines can seem like the life of a hamster but the five minutes you wait for a manager might be the ruining of your day.
For a start, I’d already been waiting for five minutes and there were no managers in sight. It might take five minutes if you say, ‘hello Crunch, you exorbitant gym. Let me pay you huge amounts of money, maybe even a rejoining fee but maybe let me pay you for all the months I haven’t even seen you where I had no idea my membership was cancelled.’ But if I start to get into ‘but why was it cancelled?’ then we’re already talking about more than five minutes.
We’re already talking about my morning at Crunch being about paying for things, arguing and not working out. So I left and on the way back I passed Orange Theory Fitness. I thought at first it might be a pay-as-you-go gym, the orange made me think of easyJet, easyGym. It was my anger with Crunch that made me sign up for classes that I would never normally have signed for.
To say this workout is hard is like saying Hugh Jackman’s biceps are moderate. It’s ridiculously hard but in a way you don’t notice it. It’s about rowing, being on the treadmill or elliptical and then doing weights so you don’t get bored. But it’s very scientific. In my initiation ceremony I was told all about the numbers. The numbers made me go numb so I can’t tell you exactly how it works but you are attached to a heart-rate monitor and your heart’s workout is up on the screen. Once your heart gets going, it’ll go from blue zone to green zone and when you push yourself, you go in the orange zone. When you go all-out, you go in the red zone. You have to spend as much time in orange and red to get the maximum potential from your workout. The amount of time you stay in orange means the more calories you burn, not only in the workout – in my case 650 but in other people’s up to 900 – but for the next 36 hours.
The more orange you are, the more your metabolism continues to work. What I liked about this extremely hard workout is that you can go at your own pace and that there was no judgment and a really mixed group. Some people superfit, some not. Some people young and gorgeous, some not. Women, men, gay, straight – none of it matters when you’re sweating this much. I can see it’s addictive, I went three times in a row at 7am but on the third day I couldn’t move, literally. An added benefit perhaps – I could not walk downstairs to the kitchen therefore I could not eat at all.
Orange Theory classes can either be purchased in packages of sessions or with a monthly membership starting from basic membership of $79 a month but you have to buy the heart monitor separately for $69.They are at 7950 West Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90046.
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Click here to see Orange Theory Fitness locations in London.
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