Testing the waters
Pool workout forces you to sink or swim
I’VE always seen paddle boarding as the ultimate celebrity workout: beachy, rigorous enough to get dewy (but not drenched) and a chance to preen in a bikini.
So when I heard about TMPL gym’s floating board-based workout class, Holy Water, I signed up in a flash.
It’s one of the newest offerings from fitness guru David Barton’s outpost in Hell’s Kitchen. Available via sign-up to TMPL members and to those who purchase day passes ($50), the class does not involve paddling, but it’s as close as you can get to that workout in the New York wintertime.
Holy Water takes place on a floating exercise mat that’s loosely tethered to the side of the pool on one side and a rope on the other. The 45-minute workout starts with a series of yoga poses before speeding up into squats, pushups and more.
The moves weren’t your typical vinyasa flow. At one point, we were told to do the “stripper cat” — gyrating our shoulders forward, down, over and back up, all on our hands and knees, while balancing on our boards.
My model-tall neighbor nailed it. Me, not so much.
Later came burpees, those dreaded jump-pushup hybrids. If you think they’re hard on land, they’re nearly impossible to do while floating.
The instructor promised that my small, hard-to-target muscles would get a workout as my body tried to stabilize in the choppy water. That part was true, but at times the rickety board felt more like a burden. It was hard to sink all the way down into a squat or extend my arms as high as possible in a lunge. So my bigger muscles — the ones that get a workout during a normal class — felt a little tight the next day, like they hadn’t had a chance to stretch out to their full potential.
It would have been a deal breaker had the class not been such a sloshing good time. There was water splashing and music blasting, and just trying to stay upright was enough to distract from my aching abs.
The 45 minutes passed in a blur, and by the end, I’d finally gotten my sea legs.