If you’re here for the Classpass deal (3 classes for $10) click here!! Post is not sponsored in any way, I just love this service & it made a positive impact on my life ^_^. Scroll down to the 4th paragraph for just my aerial yoga experience lol, I ramble too much when I write.
Hello my lovelies!
Lately with my (sadly) increasing age, I’ve felt myself wanting to focus more on my health and wellness. For some people, who I absolutely admire, it’s easy to make it to the gym/attend fitness classes and eat healthy. However, if you’re like me and the only exercise you get is going dancing and your diet consists of 80% take-out, making the switch to a better lifestyle is hard. I’ve been pretty good at trying to eat at home more often, but it was hard for me to get more into exercising – I work at a shoe store where our stock room (which I have to go to every time a customer tries something on) is down two flights of stairs, and after a long shift, nothing sounds more unappealing than heading to the gym at my building to grind it out on the treadmill some more.
Then my friend Andrew referred me to an app called Classpass. It’s a service where you pay a monthly subscription for “credits”, which you can spend on classes, which vary by value, but the cheapest subscription ($40/month) gets you 3 classes minimum. Classpass has a TON of options for fitness classes, including drop-in hip-hop/jazz/ballet/dancehall/etc. dance classes, spin classes, yoga classes, pilates classes, barre classes, work-out boot camps, and much more, even including open gym time at so many high-quality studios in Toronto.
So far, I’m halfway through my second month and I love it because there’s so many class options available – in any given day, there are pages and pages of classes you can sign up for easily through their app or on your desktop. They all have well-written descriptions so you know exactly what you’re getting into, how to get there, and what to bring. I’ve been super happy with the service because not only do I find the price really reasonable ($13 per class – most hot yoga classes are $17-20 for a single class & monthly memberships costs over $100), it gives me so much flexibility with timing, because the schedule is made up of many studios across the city instead of just one studio so I can nearly always find a class I want to go to when I have time. Also, since there’s so many different types of classes, you’re not restricted to one activity and you can try different activities without commitment! So far I’ve only done hot yoga and aerial yoga, but I’m definitely planning on trying some of the dance classes, burlesque, and barre in the future.
One of the more unique classes I took with Classpass was Aerial Yoga @ Cardio Go, a gym on King Street just steps from St. Andrew Station. I signed up for a Level 1 class, which was said to be suitable for beginners, but I was still a little nervous because I have 0 arm strength or balance. But I’ve seen tons of photos of people doing aerial yoga before and it looks so dope, so my curiosity triumphed my insecurity and I signed up.
I arrived at the gym and the receptionist showed me where the change rooms were and the yoga studio where we’d have the class. Cardio Go is equipped with lockers and shower facilities, but you have to bring your own lock.
I got changed and went to the room we were going to do yoga in, a hard-wood floor studio with hooks hanging from the ceiling, and the instructor told us each to grab a bag with straps and a mat, and showed us the correct way to hang the straps according to your height.
The class started on time, and the instructor asked how many people were new – about 5 or 6 of the 15 people who attended that session. As such, I wasn’t alone in being a complete noob and she went through the basics slow enough for most people to get it. Some moves involved using the strap to help you stretch, others used the the strap as a seat, and in general the moves increased in difficulty as the class went on – we even learned two up-side down poses (which weren’t as hard as they look!). There were a variety of moves we learned – some were to help in flexibility, while others were core/ab exercises involving hovering or pumping for a certain amount of time, which actually led to me being pretty sore the next day. Also, one thing I never really considered was that the strap can be pretty painful :(. With the moves that required a lot of weight to be put on the strap, it really digs into your skin and makes it hard for you to hold a position, even if you have the strength for them.
Unfortunately, I thought the instructor was pretty bad. She was extremely scattered and disorganized (she didn’t even know what time it was most of the time and asked people in the class multiple times), and seemed way more interested in showing off her moves, and showing us how to do “cool-looking” moves than actually building a good foundation of aerial yoga skills or getting a good work-out. Her explanations for the easy moves were decent, but for the hard ones she would just demonstrate a set of 3 moves SUPER quickly, and no one would really get it, so she would just go one by one around the room helping certain people, but it was so inefficient because she’d only be able to get to 2-3 people before moving on to the next move, while a lot of people stood idly not knowing what to do. She was also very shrill. I found it frustrating yet hilarious that sometimes she’d try to adjust people by yelling randomly at them – for example, when someone’s leg was in the wrong position she’d yell “Leg! Leg!” across the room with 0 indication of what to actually do with your leg. There was absolutely none of that lovely, calming, namaste-esque element you usually get with yoga, so I feel like this class should be re-labled aerial “moves” or something.
Despite the bad teaching, I still had a fun time learning new moves and I think I would go again, but just make sure to take another class with a different instructor because the parts of your body that it works out is so different from hot yoga – I was sore in so many places I didn’t even know could be sore. Keeping the straps from swinging was a challenge as well! I think I’d also wear long sleeves and pants next time to reduce the pain from the straps, but I had been so used to going to hot yoga lately that I just wore my usual outfit haha.
If you were interested in aerial yoga or looking for more ways to stay fit, I hope this post helped you! Feel free to DM me on instagram/comment if you have any questions or just to chat about it 🙂
-E.
E. 