Surfset Fitness is a wildly fun new way to workout. It uses the RipSurfer X, a surfboard attached atop three inflated discs. All this month Surfset Fitness has been running a pop-up studio at Chelsea Market with classes taught by popular NYC fitness instructors chosen by the team at Rate Your Burn. The roster of instructors has ranged the who's who of the NYC celebrity fitness scene, including Flywheel Sport's Holly Rilinger, Joey Gonzalez from Barry's Bootcamp and Physique 57's Chanelle Lagace. Choosing between all these phenomenal instructors was no easy feat. Ultimately I decided on Ariane Hundt and her cleverly titled "Bootcamp Surf Under the Brooklyn Bridge" class. Ariane runs the popular Brooklyn Bridge Bootcamp, a rigorous bootcamp that takes you from Manhattan, over the Brooklyn Bridge into Brooklyn and back. She came out with a DVD last year which I love, and even reviewed for Well + Good NYC, and so I really wanted to see how she would tweak her signature class by incorporating a surfboard into it.
We warmed up with jumping hacks, squats and high knees and then quickly moved onto doing step-ups on the surf board. Now, the RipSurfer X is an unstable surface so the sensation was quite different from a typical step-up, with a lot more core strength being activated. Honestly,it was much harder than I had anticipated and I literally spent the first 10 minutes maneuvering around so as to best distribute my weight over the board to prevent myself from falling off! Once I figured it out though it was incredibly fun! Ariane had us do push-ups, mountain climbers and squats on the board. We then did triceps dips while holding onto the board. For arm work we grabbed onto two pulleys that were attached to the foot of the board and used their resistance to do biceps curls, chest and shoulder presses. At one point we lay on the board on our fronts, grabbed the pulleys and "paddled." An effective way to raise one's heart rate! We ended the class with one of my favorite moves from her DVD-donkey kicks. Again, much harder when done on the RipSurfer X.
"This is going to be non-stop," Ariane had warned prior to class and she was right. I loved Ariane's style of teaching. She was enthusiastic with boundless amounts of energy, and would be motivational precisely at those moments when she sensed the class was tiring out . It was over before I knew it and I had had a blast!
We warmed up with jumping hacks, squats and high knees and then quickly moved onto doing step-ups on the surf board. Now, the RipSurfer X is an unstable surface so the sensation was quite different from a typical step-up, with a lot more core strength being activated. Honestly,it was much harder than I had anticipated and I literally spent the first 10 minutes maneuvering around so as to best distribute my weight over the board to prevent myself from falling off! Once I figured it out though it was incredibly fun! Ariane had us do push-ups, mountain climbers and squats on the board. We then did triceps dips while holding onto the board. For arm work we grabbed onto two pulleys that were attached to the foot of the board and used their resistance to do biceps curls, chest and shoulder presses. At one point we lay on the board on our fronts, grabbed the pulleys and "paddled." An effective way to raise one's heart rate! We ended the class with one of my favorite moves from her DVD-donkey kicks. Again, much harder when done on the RipSurfer X.
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| Ariane Hundt. Source |
"This is going to be non-stop," Ariane had warned prior to class and she was right. I loved Ariane's style of teaching. She was enthusiastic with boundless amounts of energy, and would be motivational precisely at those moments when she sensed the class was tiring out . It was over before I knew it and I had had a blast!
