She Sweats (solo): So you may have noticed, HE has been signing up for more and more half marathons! HE has become addicted to running. HE loves the feeling of crossing that finish line. I’m proud of HE for signing up for half after half after half all over the country. I would LOVE to be joining but unfortunately, since running the NYC marathon in 2009, I have been unable to run long distances. I still go for my 3, 4 and occasional 5 mile run a couple times each week but I just don’t think I’m built for long distance running. My legs don’t seem to like it. That being said, while HE is off racking up those half marathon trophies, I’ve been trying to find other things that only SHE’s can do. This is what brought me to Uplift Studios! That and the fact that I took Stephanie Nieman’s class at Revolve (http://www.hesweatsshesweats.com/he-she-take-on-some-of-soulcycle-flywheel-and-revolves-best/) and knew instantly that I needed to go visit her at Uplift ASAP. Also, HE has been a little sad about the fact that HE can’t go to Uplift because it’s women only (Stephanie is one of HE’s favorites) so I figured I should go while HE was tied up in something else

First of all, I’m obsessed with Stephanie’s energy. She takes it to another level during her classes and it gets you so excited you just don’t ever want to think about giving up. There are two classes you can sign up for at Uplift, Strength or Cardio. I signed up for Cardio because we had gone to Pilates Proworks the day before (http://www.hesweatsshesweats.com/pilates-proworks-with-jenn-seracuse-can-be-summarized-with-one-word-hard/) and I had a feeling I was still going to be pretty sore from it. Let me just say, good choice on my part.  The Uplift studio is really nice. One side of the studio looks like a small gym where they do personal training.  The other side is a room where the group fitness classes take place. We set ourselves up in this room with a mat and a set of 3lb weights and 2lbs weights. I was told that in the Strength class, you use a minimum of 5lbs and a maximum of 15lbs weights so I’m very interested to take that class and compare it to Cardio. Stephanie explained to me that there would be 6 intervals of high intensity cardio in this class. Each interval would consist of about three 30 second high intensity bursts with 30 second recovery periods in between. The 30 second bursts were intense! The first one was squat jumps, another one was burpees (I pray on my way to every class that I won’t have to do burpees that day but I honestly don’t remember the last time I went to a class and I didn’t have to do them) one interval was star jumps, ballerina jumps and the last interval consisted of a run through of the previous 5. Aside from the burpees, the hardest interval for me were the star jumps.  This is where Stephanie’s energy came in. She runs around the class cheering and jumping in to do the exercises with you. I was SO tired out half way through the jumps but she came over and we started doing them together and I knew I had to finish out the interval without quitting. It was awesome. After each interval she runs around high fiving and you can’t help but be as pumped as she is that you just made it through! In between the cardio intervals we worked out our arms and abs. We used the light weights for the arms portion and we did ab exercises on the mat. In the very middle of the class we did 5 minutes of yogaesque moves. Downward dog, chair pose, etc. It was a really nice break and a good way to stretch it out before jumping right back into the second half of the high intensity class.

I LOVED this class, I loved Uplift and I think Stephanie is amazing. I can’t wait to go back and try Strength. I’m also very excited that Stephanie will be sticking around NYC this summer to teach at Revolve and Uplift!

http://stephnieman.com/

http://upliftstudios.com/