RIP 60: The Gym Class That Will Give You A Workout Like No Other

I’d spotted loads of people doing this class in my gym and it almost looked like a bit of fun. Almost. They were suspended on these long stretchy ropes doing different movements and I wanted to know a bit more about it, so I signed up to a 40 minute class.

The class offers an intense core fitness and full body workout and it’s the latest form of rotational suspension training. In layman’s terms, you literally use every muscle you have and the stretchy ropes are incorporated so that you are using the whole weight of your body during the class. To begin, we had to run for five minutes on the treadmill at a speed that I wasn’t quite expecting early on a Saturday morning. Thank heavens I hadn’t been drinking the night before.

There were seven of us in the class and we were all positioned at different ropes and places in the room and the instructor showed us what we had to do at each place. After thirty seconds at one spot, you moved on to the next and spent thirty seconds there. Then you moved on to the next, and the next, and the next. A loud beeping noise would sound when you knew you had to move on. (Secondary school bleep test throwback, anyone?)

There was a moment about two minutes before the end of the class when I genuinely thought I was going to start crying.

After we had completed one lap of the room, I found myself absolutely begging the noise to sound so I could stop whatever it was that I was doing. Some of the exercises didn’t involve any of those fun looking stretchy ropes and I found some things almost not doable. The battling ropes in particular. These weren’t fun or stretchy, they were just incredibly heavy and we had to whack them up and down on the ground as many times as possible for what felt like the longest thirty seconds of my life. The suspension ropes weren’t nearly as fun as they looked either.

Without a doubt, the class made me move every muscle and joint in my entire body and I truly don’t think I’ve ever done a workout like it. There was a moment about two minutes before the end of the class when I genuinely thought I was going to start crying. That would have been pretty embarrassing as I was probably one of the youngest people in the class and thought I was a capable gym goer. It pushed my fitness levels like they have never been pushed before.

When we were finished, we had another five minutes of sprinting and rather than crying, I thought I was going to pass out. I went home and told my sister that I was never in my life going to go back and put myself though that again. My whole body ached the next day and I honestly found it difficult to walk; it was the same the following day too. I realised that my body had never been pushed like that before.

It exhausted me and I was physically drained but in hindsight it was quite exhilarating.

One of my friends does the class every week and swears by it, she also looks incredible, so, er, go figure.I couldn’t understand why she would ever want to go back but as my pain subsided and I began to feel normal again, the desire to return and do it again started to creep in. It exhausted me and I was physically drained but in hindsight it was quite exhilarating. It was a workout I could never do myself and it touched every muscle in my body. There’s no way that you could do the class without burning a very high level of calories and working up a seriously intense sweat so in terms of losing weight, this class would have you shedding it.

Verdict: I think that the pain and exhaustion that you feel after the class is really worth it if you want to see results. If you were looking to get into shape before Christmas, a few of these classes would 100% get you all the way there.

• body
• exercise
• fitness
• health
• RIP 60