April | 2012 | Sonic Fitness

• CLUB FOCUS: CRUNCH Sunset Blvd Sinks It’s Teeth Into The Suunto Fitness Solution

Crunch Sunset is, in their own words a “quintessentially cool Hollywood gym; a place to see and be seen as much as it is a place to workout…Members here are as electric as the Strip itself and know how to work a room, mingling while they move their bodies.” A premier fitness centre using Suunto Fitness Solution to it’s full potential is a sight to behold, and their Tommy Woelfel filled us in!

“Using the Suunto technology has not only provided the members with a new, exciting, colorful and visual way to learn about incorporating heart rate training into their workouts, it has forced me
as an instructor to learn more and become a better instructor! I love it!”

Crunch – Sunset has incorporated the Suunto Fitness Solution technology in two ways:

The Red Line Ride is a class where members can borrow a heart rate monitor from the gym and see their heart rates projected on a screen at the front of the class. A nickname is used so that no one feels self-conscious about having their personal information projected in such a way. Tommy coaches a ride that references the heart rates and corresponding color zones (percentages of a given maximum heart rate). Members are encouraged (but not required) to purchase their own heart rate monitor.

Those with their own belts will receive an email with detailed results of the Ride. In addition, the details will also be automatically uploaded to the member’s profile on the website, Movescount.com where even more information and detailed comparisons can be viewed!

Periodically, Crunch will host a CAMP CRUNCH: Red Line Ride 6-Week Intensive. This is a program where a limited number of members sign up for 2 semi-private classes per week. These classes provide more personal attention by an instructor trained to use the Suunto Fitness Solution technology. Additional articles and resources are provided to the participants.

“The customer feedback has been amazing! In the CAMP CRUNCH: Red Line Ride 6-Week Intensive, almost half of the participants in the initial program signed up for the second offering! One of the participants used to hate spinning. Now, she can’t wait to get into class and take her heart rate into the red!”

The CAMP CRUNCH: Red Line Ride Intensives and the Red Line Ride classes have provided Crunch with a new program and a new class to help keep members excited about Crunch and it’s classes.

“I am continuously excited by our members’ desire to learn more. I am constantly challenged to continue providing the best and most intense classes using the Suunto Fitness Solution technology. I am always rewarded as an instructor by the comments, results, changes in lifestyle and workouts, and the increased information that members enjoy and share with me.”

Visit Crunch on the Web: http://www.crunch.com/Locations/Los%20Angeles/Sunset.aspx

Ride With Tommy! http://www.ridewithtommy.com/

• Interview with Sally Edwards

Are You Ready For Sally Edwards?

Jason Maxwell

It’s not every day that you get to sit down and speak with a legend. These people are few and far between. As the population grows, legends become more and more rare. In fact, I’m still grinning from my talk with a triathlete legend, serial entrepreneur, heart rate expert, author, public speaker, and the nicest person you will ever meet (except for when she made fun of me for saying “eh”).

Enter Sally Edwards.
Photo courtesy of zoningfitness.com

*Believe it or not, she’s even cooler and more energetic in person.*

Growing up in the pre Title IX era, 90 percent of sports budgets went to boys sports. Even though this occurred, Sally still played and excelled in every sport imaginable. “I chose my parents well, so I can thank them for my good genes. Even though there were no teams, and no opportunities, I played as many sports as I could, and then got into competitive running in my early twenties.” The great thing about running, is that you don’t need funding to be able to start. We now know that competitive running was Sally’s gateway into something much, much more.

“I had been doing ultra-marathons for 3 or 4 years and won a couple of 100 mile races. I then decided that I wanted the next challenge: Ironman triathlons (this is partly because there were no other triathlons to do). I did my first Ironman in 1980 and was the fifth woman to ever finish an Ironman triathlon. I finished 2^nd, fell in love with the sport and wrote the first book on triathlon training (before anybody even knew what triathlons were). Since then, I’ve written 24 books in total. At the time we were a bunch of freaks, and winning these races were no big deal…but then in my 40’s I ran a race and set the masters world record…and that was pretty cool. To do a personal best when you are 40 years old feels really good.”

Now, we all know that you can’t just go out and enter a triathlon without training. At the peak of Sally’s career, she would predominantly use cross training (she coined the term in her first book, Triathlon). “When I was doing competitive running, I was a big advocate of specificity of training, and cross training was a logical transition for me while doing triathlons. In 1984, I got my first heart rate monitor, and since then I’ve only done heart rate based training.”

“The heart rate monitor is a biofeedback tool (like the speedometer on your car). It’s fun and gives context using data and numbers. For years, it was our only way of measuring physical stress. Second of all, it’s also a diagnostic and a tool and can help measuring physiological response to different situations. A few years ago, Heart Zones (my company) fell in love with the Suunto Fitness Solution. We called it the ‘Gymbotron’ because we would project a whole group’s heart rate zones onto big screens in gyms and high schools. It was like a huge fitness event! This way, we could track everyone in the group’s heart rate, and use this as an indicator to see if anyone is working too hard, or on the other hand not hard enough. The indoor cycling studios just loved being able to teach and guide exercise intensity based on individualizing the experience, yet they can all train together as a group.” The Suunto Fitness Solution was a stable and reliable platform for Sally’s training, and made her workouts more effective.

After speaking with Sally, I felt like I learned a crazy amount of information about heart rate training, business, goal setting, and just enjoying life. If I could describe Sally is one sentence it would have to be this: The girl’s got heart.

For more info on Sally, you can check her out at any of the following websites:

www.theSallyEdwardsCompany.com

www.ZoningFitness.com

www.HeartZones.com

www.jmaxfitness.com

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reblogged with permission