Cary Street Gym expands group exercise classes

Samra Khawaja
Managing Editor of CT.org

The Cary Street Gym is helping students kick off the semester by adding close to a dozen new group exercise classes, setting a record of at least 130 options for students to choose from.

This is the first time that this many classes are being offered at the start of a semester, said Eric West, assistant director of recreational sports and fitness. He said it normally takes until the end of a semester to reach that number.

“We really did a big push to hire new instructors,” West said. “Instructors have to have the certification in order for us to offer a new class.”

This semester, recreational sports is introducing new classes such as Triple Threat, P90X, Insanity, Hip Hop Aerobics, Absoglutely, Wild Card Cardio, and Glutes & Guts.

“Everyone hears about them all the time but it’s hard to do a class like that,” said fitness program assistant, Danish Saadat. “Now that it’s offered, people want to do it because they have the space and they have the instructor to do it with.”

The facility has more than 30 instructors who lead the group classes. While some trainers have brought new exercise styles, others are taking a new spin on classes that have been around, like yoga.

“When we bring in a new instructor, they have a different way of teaching a class,” said Amit Vohra, personal trainer and instructor. “Every class is going to be different depending on the instructor. “

Grad student Sarah Kim, who regularly attends classes at the gym, is always looking for a challenging workout. She said seeing new classes in the calendar gives her a chance to test different training methods.

“I’ve taken a lot of classes here and I was excited to see all the new classes,” she said. “They have some really good classes that will be worth trying.”

West said the gym hopes to continue hiring new instructors to meet their goal of adding 25 more classes during the semester.

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