BY GLORIA STRAVELLI
Staff Writer
CHRIS KELLY staff Margaret Schmidt and Pam Nelson have tailored their circuit-training facility in Fair Haven to appeal to women who are not comfortable in a traditional gym setting.
So, you tried to honor that New Year’s resolution to shape up by joining a gym? But your good intentions were short-circuited when you got there and glimpsed the cross-training machines and buff bodies in figure-revealing exercise attire.
Don’t kiss those six packs goodbye yet. There’s a place where you can shape up without the beefcake.
"No one’s in competition to see who can lift the most, who looks the best in the spandex," said Pam Nelson, co-owner of Go Figure 4U, a women-only circuit training center on River Road in Fair Haven. "It’s less intimidating. It’s just not here. There’s no spandex here."
"You don’t feel like you have to try and keep up, concurred Linda Kroll, Rumson. "You do what you can do. A lot of it’s the age of the people at the other gyms, the weights and the sweaty men. You’re not guessing what you have to do, and it’s all women."
"You don’t have to think about adjusting any weights," added Diane Jacobs, Fair Haven.
"I’ve just been in a gym for three months. There’s nothing more boring than using the treadmill and watching the clock," said Lynn Wheeler, Fair Haven. "Here, it’s not boring. You’re moving around and exercising different parts of your body."
Go Figure 4U, noted Nelson, is a user-friendly, non-intimidating approach to physical fitness for women, especially female baby boomers. The average age of members is 48 years, said Nelson, who, like co-owner Margaret Schmidt, is a retiree well into her 50s.
"We’re geared to an average group from 40-60 years of age," said Schmidt. "In our area, that is a lot of women; a big-achievement group."
Membership is steadily rising at the Fair Haven center, where upbeat music plays while members complete two turns around an eight-station circuit in 30 minutes. Members can lose themselves in the moment — a sound prompt signals when it’s time to change stations.
The 2,200-square-foot center has a warm-up room, exercise room, kitchenette, changing room and a spare room the owners plan to use for classes in yoga.
Each piece of equipment is geared to exercise a different area of the body, and recovery stations are located in between exercise stations.
"On the circuit, your heart rate is brought up and down as you go around to burn the maximum ratio of fat calories," Nelson explained.
"The whole idea here is to concentrate on raising your heart rate while you’re on the machine," she explained. "You get your heart rate up, then you get on a recovery pad and your heart rate comes down a little and you get ready for the next machine."
According to Nelson, this approach to exercising maximizes the burning of fat calories.
When you do that, you are burning stored fat," she explained.
Opened in the fall, Go Figure has some 150 members ranging from schoolteachers to belly dancers, from high school athletes to octogenarians, who pay $39.95 a month, $35 for seniors, for a membership based on a minimum of three visits per week. According to Nelson, the sign up fee is routinely waved.
"The number of weekly visits is unlimited," she said, "and you don’t have to leave after 30 minutes."
To keep the circuit interesting, the format is changed frequently. The signal that prompts when to move on to the next station on the circuit is varied weekly, and every other week the stations are reconfigured.
Just a few months into the new business, Nelson said the center is holding its own financially and the partners have a projected target of 30 member visits per hour.
Homey touches like a kitchenette, community bulletin board and nicely furnished changing room are designed to cater to women who have been neglected by conventional fitness centers, Nelson said.
"I think the working woman and single moms have been neglected. I think they’re intimidated. There is a comfort level here," she said.
That doesn’t mean the center has nothing to offer women who are serious about fitness training, she added.
"We have some fairly good athletes," she said. "They come because they can get in another 30 minutes of a workout."
Since Go Figure is open six days a week, 12 hours per day on weekdays, it is used by different categories of members, Nelson observed.
"It seems the hours dictate who comes in," she noted. "First thing in the morning, we see young working women who have the energy to work out before they go to work.
"The next group is stay-at-home moms who come in after they drop their children off. The lunch hour really is a mix, and in the afternoon, it’s the three o’clock people, we see teachers, nurses, women working part time."
Nelson, Middletown, and Schmidt, Atlantic Highlands, are long-time friends who joined a franchise-operated circuit-training center together.
Schmidt was recovering from a bout with cancer and was determined to take better care of herself, and talked her friend into doing the same.
"Neither one of us were gym people," said Nelson, who had had seven knee surgeries and was facing the prospect of a knee replacement. "She talked me into it."
The former Rumson residents enjoyed the experience so much they decided to open a similar center, but after researching the field, decided to avoid ceding control to a franchise.
"We had to stay within their parameters, and we wanted to have control of what we wanted to offer,’ Nelson said. "We wanted to make it fun so after three months you want to keep coming."
"We decided not to go with a franchise because we thought we could find better equipment, and we did," Schmidt added. "Our equipment is dual hydraulic so you can adjust the tension on these machines, which is very important. Hydraulic exercise builds, tones and strengthens. It does not tear, whereas in weight training you can tear. There’s really a time in your life when you can do that kind of training. You can’t do it for your whole life."
According to Nelson, circuit training is ideal for people with physical limitations.
"The machines are adaptable to all levels of physical fitness," she said. "I have women who have leg, back and arm problems. They do the exercises slower, but they’re not missing out."
And, Nelson said, the training is getting results. Women patrons are reporting lower cholesterol, decreased blood pressure and weight loss.
"And, they’re getting here," she added. "They’re not making excuses."
There’s an added component to membership besides the physical benefit, noted Nelson.
"It’s not just the exercise," she observed. "There’s a social component. The one thing members tell me consistently is they feel so good because, even though it’s only 30 minutes, they’re doing something for themselves. They don’t have the time to do that for an hour and a half at a gym. It might be just a little time, but it’s all theirs."