Orangetheory’s Heart-Rate-Monitored Training Helps Members Meet Goals

Orangetheory’s Heart-Rate-Monitored Training Helps Members Meet Goals

Orangetheory Fitness Wellington is one of more than 500 Orangetheory studio locations worldwide offering heart-rate-monitored personal training, interval fitness programs.

One of the main goals at Orangetheory is to strive for a calorie afterburn or the “excess post-exercise oxygen consumption” (EPOC) effect, as Studio Manager Kevin Cohen explained. According to this method, the body will continue to burn calories after exercise when pushing the body to its limits during workouts.

“Depending on your height and your weight, things like that, you could burn from 300 to 700 calories 36 hours after the workout, as well as however many calories you burn in your workout,” Cohen said.

The fitness club is a group-training facility, so clients are always working in groups when training at an Orangetheory location. Still, Cohen said they set up consultations with members who are working toward their own specific goals while exercising alongside others.

“Before anybody takes their first class with us, we have them come in 30 to 40 minutes early,” Cohen said. “We develop a personal touch and have them fill out a clientele intake form.”

Those personal touches are what Orangetheory locations work toward to give every member a unique experience.

“We go over their goals and see what they’re trying to accomplish, as well as introduce them to the trainer,” Cohen said. “It’s 20 minutes with us and 20 minutes with the trainer, and that’s pretty much how we get an idea for exactly what kind of workout we’re going to have for them and what we need to modify.”

The moment they step into the gym, clients are given heart rate monitors to use during exercise, and then personal heart rates are displayed on LED screens throughout the gym. There are five color-coded levels, which correlate with a percentage of your maximum heart rate: Gray, Blue, Green, Orange and Red.

“There is not going to be one person who is going to try to keep up with another person’s speed throughout the whole class,” Cohen said. “Everyone is going to go at their own pace.”

The goal is to be exercising with heart rates in the orange and red zones for the majority of the time. This gives the body the best chance to reach EPOC, the afterburn effect. “You can definitely push yourself more with the heart rate monitor,” Cohen said. “Just seeing your zones up there on the screen, you know if you’re slacking or not.”

Each class is 60 minutes long. They feature intervals of cardiovascular and strength training. During an individual’s consultation with an Orangetheory trainer, the client will get to work on goals and key in on personal fitness areas, whether it be weight loss, strength building, muscle tone and more.

When you leave the Orangetheory gym, the heart rate training doesn’t have to stop.

“The heart rate monitors that we use here can also be used outside the studio. If you’re going for a jog or going to play basketball, you can download the app, hook it up, and then you can actually see what heart rate zones you’re in,” Cohen said.

Cohen originally started working for Orangetheory at its headquarters studio in Fort Lauderdale, where the Orangetheory fitness journey began in 2010. Cohen was once a skeptic of heart-rate-monitored training, but has since found it to be personally effective.

“I really started focusing on that and going into some details with that and learning about it, and, personally, I’ve already lost a lot of weight, and my condition has gone up [by] huge numbers,” Cohen said. “I would definitely say it’s the EPOC effect.”

Cohen enjoys the culture at Orangetheory Wellington.

“The whole reason I took on a job with Orangetheory two and half years ago was because of the different vibe. It’s more family based,” he said. “We don’t just go like big gyms, ‘Oh, another person in here; enjoy your workout.’ We try to get personal with our members.”

Cohen continues to add personal touches to the fitness experience at Orangetheory, calling his members to ask about their dieting outside of the gym and pushing them to meet their goals.

“If somebody comes in here and tells me they’re looking to lose 15 to 20 pounds, two weeks later I’m going to call that person and ask them how it’s going,” Cohen said. “I’m going to ask them if they’ve been coming in. I’m going to ask them if they’ve been changing a little bit of their dieting habits.”

Orangetheory Wellington is located at 2625 N. State Road 7, For more information, call (561) 296-0485 or visit http://wellington.orangetheoryfitness.com.

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