I first heard about Orangetheory Fitness when A Lady Goes West, a fellow fitness blogger friend, became an instructor at one of their studios in the Bay Area, California. I went to their website to find out more and was intrigued; I couldn’t really get a clear sense of what the workout involved as it seemed to involve everything! TRX, rowing machine, treadmill and etc. Luckily for me, there is a studio located in Salt Lake City which lets you try out your first class for free.

The Orangetheory

 The staff at Orangetheory Salt Lake City were very helpful, which helped make a great first impression! They explained to me that they give everyone a heart rate monitor for the duration of the class to track their heart rate and calorie burn. There are several different heart rate zones that the instructor encourage you to push to. 

“The physiological theory behind the Orangetheory workout is known as “Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption,” or EPOC. By providing you with a heart rate monitor and POD, we can monitor your 5 zone interval training sessions that we call the Orange 60. During the 60 minute workout, you will perform multiple intervals designed to produce 12-20 minutes of training at 84% or higher of your maximum heart rate, which translates to Zones 4/5. This program design produces EPOC, which is the workout “after-burn” effect, meaning that our interval training design produces a 200-400 calorie increase to your metabolism 24-36 hours after your workout.”

The Workout

They split us into 2 groups; one group started on the rowing machine for a warmup before quickly moving on to weights, and the other group would do intervals on the treadmill. I was in the rowing machine and weights section group, and so our instructor made us do a quick warm up using the rowing machine before moving onto the weights section. The strength portion of the workout was set up in a circuit style. You did several reps of an exercise before moving onto the next one, and then repeating everything once you had finished all the exercises. The last 3 minutes of the weights section involved body weight exercises which really got my heart rate going!

When my group moved on to the cardio portion of the workout on the treadmills, you had the choice of either power walking, jogging or running. I thought it was fantastic of them to give such a variety of options and I think this is a great way to encourage people to join. In the past, I had always been a little intimidated to do workouts that involved running or sprinting, because I am not a runner. It was great to be able to power walk (with bouts of crazy incline) and then to do an all out sprint at the end. It made me much more inclined to come back and try Orangetheory Fitness Salt Lake City again 🙂 

We cooled down with a few minutes of stretching, and someone shared a very impressive story of someone who had won the Guinness World Record for planking (they planked for like, 3-4 hours or something insane like that)!

Honestly Fitness Approved

All in all, I really enjoyed my workout and I would definitely go back. Since I do have a gym membership, I decided not to buy a pack of classes, but would love to come back every now and again to do an Orangetheory workout. It really challenged and pushed my body in a new and fun way, and it was fascinating to see my heart rate and calorie burn – I burned almost 500 calories! The only annoying part about my whole experience was that I had a few issues with my heart rate monitor. I had to change it a few times because they were acting all weird and would stop reading my heart rate after 10 minutes or so into the workout. I am glad we finally got it fixed in the end though.

Have you tried out a class at OrangeTheory Fitness?

Honestly yours,
Alice

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Salt Lake City health and fitness blogger