A Different Approach To Fitness
If you attend our classes for long enough, you’ll soon realize there are three types, or styles, of classes in our 360 program.
Some are around 12-15 minutes of sweating after a lifting (strength training) session for 12-15 minutes. Some are insanely fast and brutal, which also follow a lifting sesh. And some that are in the 25-30 minutes of “How the hell am I going to finish this?”
We’ve labeled these so that you can help identify the purpose and structure of each class and its unique design. If you come to our classes long enough, the following collection of terms will become common:
Box Jumps. Thrusters. Pull-Ups. Rowing. Hang Power Cleans.
LIFT. PACE. RACE. GRINDS.
The first group consists of common exercises you’ll find in plenty of other fitness classes – nothing special.
The second grouping consists of words we at Iron-Oak Fitness use to give an identity to our workout program.
But the magic of what we’ve created in our 360 class lies completely within the careful and methodical placement of these different identities and the operational definition we give them.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the secret sauce it this – in order to create the ideal combination of strength training and cardio, the workouts need to have three unique “speeds” or “feels.”
Any workout program can switch the exercises up on you. That’s the easy part. The difficulty is making the workouts feel different.
So, what are these identities? Let’s circle back to the opening list –
LIFT. RACE. PACE. GRINDS.
Every Iron-Oak Fitness class has two components to the workout – one part LIFT, which focuses on building lean, strong, muscle. The other part is our cardio, which falls into RACE, PACE, or GRIND. This is where the high-intensity fat burning comes in, particularly after hitting our LIFT sesh first.
RACES are the all-out, lung burning, efforts you love to hate. The class style starts with a longer LIFT portion that satisfies your strength training for the day and then the RACE throws you into the deep end of our highest intensity workout.
Even though these intervals are also the shortest duration, we promise you, 90 seconds has never felt so long.
PACES are designed to put you through a continuous increase in intensity – either through increased time, reps, and/or weights.
Our PACE style starts with a LIFT session, typically focusing on two – three strength-based movements, that will also be incorporated in the main bulk of the workout, the cardio portion. This serves the dual purpose to allow you to get in plenty of practice reps and a solid strength training session.
GRINDS utilize a group of carefully selected movements that create that feeling of “is this ever going to end?!” by pushing you through our most endurance-based workouts that you’ll face each week.
Because this style is our longest and most cardio-intensive workout, we forgo the dedicated LIFT portion and allow you to choose heavier weights if you’re wanting a strength fix, or lighter weights if you’re all about the endurance.
