Flashback: The VersaClimber is a complete-body cardio machine that was a hit in the 80’s, grazing late-night TV infomercials when millennials were still barely toddlers. Recently, it just made a huge comeback with celebrities like Jennifer Aniston and LeBron James (among just a few) hailing it as their biggest fitness secret. Now, this high-intensity, low-impact vertical climber runs on its second show in the gyms, with trainers all across the country crafting entire workout programs around it.

VersaClimber – How It Works

With pedals and handles utilizing all of your four limbs, the VersaClimber (vertical climber) exercises your entire body through a “cross-crawl” motion. Your right arm alternatingly goes up as your left leg does, then your left arm and right leg or vice versa. From our early years, we humans have been primitively conditioned to do this functional movement; hence this machine helps enhance proper body movement patterns, thereby promoting overall strength and stability.

The machine works out the arms, legs, glutes, core, and back altogether; thus if you use it long enough, you’ll begin to feel like you’re getting a serious workout, and it is. As you recruit more muscles, your body also uses more oxygen which is the catalyst that ignites a great caloric burn.

You can expect to burn about 600 to 800 calories for only 30 minutes of climbing! That’s how fast and effectively it works.

How to Use a VersaClimber:

Starting Out

At first, you will realize that the pedals of the machine are staggered. Simply step on the bottom pedal first (with your right or left foot), then step on the other pedal (the top pedal) with your other foot. Hold on to the shoulder-height horizontal handlebars to help keep your balance.

The vertical climber also has a screen that displays all of your performance stats such as total steps, average steps per minute, time elapsed, and more—useful indicator for tracking your progress and setting your fitness goals.

Body Positioning

At first you may feel like it’s only natural to stand completely upright and align your body to the machine’s central vertical rail. Ideally however, you want instead to keep your body’ weight back so push your hips back and keep your chest up while bending your knees. This ensures that your glutes are engaged. (The glutes are the human body’s largest muscle group, hence the VersaClimber’s primary mover.)

Range of Motion and Speed

You have full control as to your speed and range of motion when using the VersaClimber. It is up to you how fast you want to go; the same goes for the range of motion. You can do both short strokes and long strokes to mix up your exercise. In fact, in an athletic conditioning class at my studio, CRAG, in Jersey City, you will be taken through various ranges of motion from full to short and back again. This not only keeps things interesting but forces your body to move as it would in sport. There are times when you need to go all out and then you slow down and jog at a light speed and much shorter range of motion. This is one of the reasons we excel at athletic conditioning. The weight loss and muscular definition that comes along with it are great by-products, but conditioning is primary.

Hand Placement

You can grip the handles of the machine either with palms facing toward you or away from you. A major problem with most fitness studios, from bootcamps to major well known national fitness studios that use treadmills to indoor cycling…especially indoor cycling…is that they neglect one of the largest muscle groups, your back. This is a major no-no. Our back muscles give us presence, whether man or woman. When someone has a presence it’s because their back is developed. My Versaclimber classes at CRAG Work your back without you even thinking about it. With every stride on the Versaclimber you are pulling down. That’s your back muscles at work. It’s like your doing 400 pull-ups in every class.

If you place your palms facing you, similar to doing chin-ups, you not only work your back but you also get more bicep engagement. The next time you take a CRAG class, checkout how well defined the guys and girls are. You actually can’t help but to develop a nice physique when you train at CRAG.

Spin Class

You start by keeping the hips back and chest forward but you can also place your hands on the side rails and only use your legs to move up and down. This is what happens in a spin class except unlike a spin bike there’s no inertia in a Versaclimber. If you tap the pedal on a spin bike it will glide a little bit on its own. With the Versaclimber, if you want it to move…YOU HAVE TO MOVE IT. So if you want those powerful sprinter legs here’s what you do:

Take your hands off of the grips and place them on the front rail.

Squat down low.

Start pumping your legs with a full range of motion. In other words take really big steps. Bring your knees up to your face as our instructors say at CRAG.

Now increase the tension.

In 2 minutes time you will hate life, but you’ll love your legs. And the next time you go to a spin class you won’t even break a sweat.

Resistance

The knob directly in front of you and right below the screen is the tension. The further to the right you turn it, the more and more difficult it is to move the Versaclimber. This allows us to work in the strength realm in addition to cardio and endurance.

Just remember to keep at it!

Just like any new exercise machine or fitness class, using the VersaClimber can be quite intimidating and extremely taxing at first. Once you get the right feel of it though, your movement will start feeling more fluid and natural.

When you begin to break a sweat, just keep moving and soon enough, your breathing will also even out as well as your rhythm.

The VersaClimber is a serious workout machine but as you keep at it, your conditioning will go through the roof and your body will look like a well oiled machine. There’s a reason top level professional athletes swear by this machine. CRAG makes this top level secret training accessible to all.

Come take a class if you’re in the New York City metro area. We’d love to have you.

The post The Most Intense Celebrity Workout, and The Cardio Machine Behind It appeared first on CRAG.

Well let me be more precise…I hate my industry, the fitness industry.

As a personal trainer, studio owner and group fitness co-owner, let me say unequivocally that I fucking hate my industry.

I can hear you saying the obvious, “why work in an industry you hate so much then?”

That’s a great question and to answer it I would say that I chose a long time ago to focus on the few and not the many. Therein lies the problem.

You see, the fitness “industry” tends to focus on the many which is a problem. If you want to assimilate and make a ton of money during this gold rush, than people tend to focus on the many.

Get as many people as possible into your gym. Get as many unsuspecting idiots into your group fitness studio as possible.

Promise them the world. Promise them results that are otherworldly and have only actually happened to 2 people out of 1000 members.

Lie to them and tell them that they’ll lose weight. (As if everybody just wants to lose weight.)

Use words like “quickly” and “rapidly” over and over again.

Tell them that they can eat whatever they want to eat because your studio, your workout is the answer they’ve been searching long and hard for.

Use celebrity imagery that will make them hop on the latest ridiculous trend.

Boxing and Kickboxing are the in thing now so it stands to reason that everyone thinks they’re Jake Gyllenhaal preparing for his role in South Paw. Or, they think they’re the untouchable and lightning quick Floyd Mayweather

The only problem is……YOURE NOT! What they don’t tell you is that you’ll NEVERRRRRRR achieve that level of physique or technique. Celebrities have nothing but time on their hands. Of course they’ll look like that, and most of the time that’s very short lived. Right after the important scenes are over they go right back to being their normal out of shape selves.

So you may be saying to yourself, “well even if I get half as good results then I’ll be ahead of the curve…”

The problem is you won’t come anywhere near that close. You won’t even come within the stratosphere.

My industry doesn’t want you to get those results. Despite the dogma, the money is not in quick results. The money is in getting people hooked on your proposed solution and dragging out that addiction as long as you can. You see, the fitness industry on the whole is no different then your friendly neighborhood drug dealer or our dear friends at Pfizer and Merck.

If I can get you hooked then I can sustain the flow of money from your pocket to my pocket.

You need to believe that the reason you look the way you do and perform the way you do is because of me and my magical workout formula. It’s because of this magical fairy dust book that I’m peddling that tells you about a new macronutrient ratio that I recently discovered in a secret text buried high atop the Himalayan mountains.

And once you believe that bullshit, I got you!

Your life savings can now easily be siphoned. And you thought fortune tellers and gypsy were the con artists and crooks. HAHA! Boy have you been enlightened!

All of this plays a major part in the development of my latest venture, CRAG. CRAG is the first and only Versaclimber group fitness studio on the east coast.

What’s a Versaclimber you ask? It’s that tall metal stick that sits in the corner of most gyms that nobody uses. It’s that thing that all the elite athletes from Boxing, to Basketball to Soccer to MMA/BJJ praise. Its that thing you tried many many years ago that you got on for probably 20 seconds and got off feeling so winded that you vowed never to get back on it again.

Yeah, that thing.

I’m a fitness coach. I own a personal training studio. I give people six-packs and help people run marathons faster. I believe in efficiency. I don’t believe in stretching something out for the sake of stretching it out which is why I’m not a fan of most bootcamps. Bootcamps and many other “HIIT” studios are created by idiots that want to run you ragged for an hour so you “feel” like you got a good workout.

They open studios and employ all of the tactics above to get you hooked on their magical brand of Kool-Aid, and for the most part it works.

So when people walk through the doors of CRAG they’re expecting the same thing. But, they’re immediately curious about why the classes are only 30 minutes.

Well, let me be the first to tell you that it has nothing to do with marketing and luring in the sheep. It has everything to do with efficiency. Ya see, people that are serious about their fitness usually have other shit to do. Fitness doesn’t define them. It’s a component of their active existence. My 30 minute classes are efficient. And believe me, I achieve in 30 minutes what takes most others an hour to do.

That efficiency can be punishing…but ultra rewarding. So when people come in to try a class, they’re usually expecting some indoor cycling experience or some bootcamp experience. And in 5 minutes they’re decimated never to come back again. They head for easier pastures that will tell them how great they are and how amazing they are doing. (This is all code for keep coming back year after year with no progress so I can keep siphoning.)

I understand that I have a business to run. I understand that I have to make it successful. I want to make this successful strictly so that people will actually get results and be happier working harder. It’s just such a fine line to walk because I hate what my industry does to the minds of unsuspecting people. And Im not willing to dumb down my product just to make somebody feel like they got a great workout.

CRAG caters to the few. And from those few they become many. Our workouts are very addictive. Each person that drinks the Kool-Aid and sees amazing improvement in physique and performance tells someone else. It will take time but our few will become the many.

To all the early adopters I salute you. Everybody will catch up later.

And to all those fitness studios promising the world and never delivering…and to all the bootcamps that are just running people ragged for an hour straight….STOP! Actually take the time to plan out your programming. Give people what they actually want. If someone decides to stay with you because your workout is just that good and they actually see results and improvements I’m all for it. Be for the love of whomever you pray to, please stop with all the marketing madness!

There are some great fitness studios out there, but there are many horrible ones. Don’t be one of the horrible ones.

If you’re in the NYC metro area and want to see what efficiency and effectiveness feels like just stop on by CRAG  

The post Why I Hate the Fitness Industry appeared first on CRAG.