Feeling Gravity’s muscle-building pull
BY ROY M. WALLACK >>> The Total Gym, an adjustable-angle, elevated slide-board with pulley-cables that uses your body weight and gravity to provide resistance, has evoked a range of opinions since it debuted during the mid-’70s. But after doing Total Gym’s licensed Gravity group workout, I’m convinced the naysayers are fools — or just haven’t tried it. In an hour, Gravity left me blasted from head to toe. “Whether you’re a die-hard musclehead or a grandmother, the Total Gym’s logic is simple: Steeper equals heavier,” says 220 Fitness owner Matteo Baker. “Just adjust the angle to increase or decrease the resistance.” Workouts come and workouts go at 220, a colorful menagerie of workouts , but Gravity has packed them in for five years, he says. 220 Fitness, 3002 Main St., Santa Monica, 220fitness.com
Aura
Low-key but nonstop. Eight industrial-strength Total Gyms sit in an airy second-floor room. Techno music wafts from the speakers — but it may as well be nursery rhymes. The music doesn’t matter in this engrossing, always-moving workout. For the eight men and women in class, the focus is completely on the exercises — which instructor Leila Mansfield was throwing at us at a one-per-minute pace.
Effort
Calm, methodical and exhausting. After a few minutes, you discover that 60 seconds is an eternity when doing the same exercise, whether it be lying-down rows, sitting-up rows, flys, squats, calf raises, biceps curls, triceps pullovers, lat pulls or lunges.
Trying to pace yourself becomes a must, because the last 15 seconds should hurt.
Style
There’s no screaming and shouting from Mansfield, and there doesn’t need to be. In businesslike tones, reading from a list, she explains each exercise, monitors form and counts down the last 20 seconds, which was very motivating. Knowing the relief of a new exercise was coming soon, we’d keep pushing to the point where we were shaking and gasping — the classic recipe for maximum strength gains in a weight workout.
Cost
A class is $20. Monthly memberships are $129 to $149.