Gyms power their way out of machine age

When one thinks of a gym the image that most likely comes to mind is of a sweaty hulk pumping iron. Certainly, nobody thinks of a person swinging across monkey bars or jumping through a row of tractor tyres. Are those even legit exercises for adults? Now they are as gyms ditch conventional gym machines for workouts that seem as if they came straight from the children's playground.

The reason for this shift is the stress on functional training (FT), which uses a person's body weight as resistance. Fitness is no longer about machines, says Bhumika Grover, who specializes in FT. "At the most I will let my students use the treadmill for warm-up, the rest is all no-tech," says Grover, a trainer at the gym in Sirifort sports complex, south Delhi.

Studio Bam, a-soon-to-open gym in south Delhi, has not invested in bodybuilding equipment at all. "We are focusing on group exercises and functional training," says Prince J Singh, a group exercise specialist at Studio Bam. "The functional training space has a TRX cage, a dash track, monkey bars and ropes for climbing," says Singh.

Reebok master trainer Vinata Shetty says Crossfit - the fitness trend that combines weight lifting, gymnastics and endurance training and has attracted more than 10 million practitioners around the world — has become an "epidemic" in Mumbai. "Even men are moving away from machine-centric workouts which are repetitive and don't benefit beyond a point," says Shetty, who does five classes of Crossfit a day with 20 members each.

Leena Anand, 43, has been introduced to a variety of FT moves that imitate animal movements — spider crawl, crab walk, frog jumps. "FT is excellent for homemakers as it helps one do heavy chores without breaking a sweat," says Anand, a mother of two. As she likes to say: "Now my body is my machine."

At Fitness First's Connaught Place branch, the bench press and chest press machines have made way for a climbing wall, dash track and ropes that have to be moved up and down in a wave motion. "It is the easiest way to get fit because these exercises work out different muscle groups of the body simultaneously," says Manish Ruhail, fitness manager at this gym. For example, swinging across monkey bars will work on your core (abs and lower back), lateral torso as well as the arms. Plus, it's fun. "At our gym we have TRX suspension, a climbing wall and BOSU," says Ruhail listing different kinds of FT equipment. TRX suspension is a workout that involves a person holding two straps anchored to a point, say a wall, and then exercising using her body weight against the wall while BOSU is used for improving balance.

Of course, people who are into bodybuilding continue to pump iron but their numbers are dwindling, say trainers. "People have realized that working out on machines for long increases the risk of injury and does not guarantee overall fitness of the body," adds Arun Arora, a Delhi-based certified TRX instructor.

The trend is also fuelled by the fact that people now want a leaner, more agile body as opposed to bulging biceps. "Working professionals opt for FT as they don't big muscles but want to do workouts that engage their body and mind at different levels," says Gaurav Nirwal, sales head at Noida branch of Gold's Gym. Gold's Gym, a fitness chain with more than 50 branches across India, will be introducing trademark functional training programmes - TRX and Crossfit — by February next year.