When Night Clubs Meet Fitness Studios
A 305 Fitness class in session. (Photo: 305 Fitness)
This is a no-judgment zone.”
That’s Elena Littles’s message before a 305 Fitness class in the District of Columbia last month. If you want to sing, holler or shriek, do it. If you feel the urge to jump, spin or roll on the (padded) floor, be her guest. You say you’re itching to flail your arms and shimmy? Go for it.
All the 305 Fitness instructor — who’s also a cheerleader for the Washington Redskins and a dancer and student at Howard University — cares about is that you move and have fun. And, in a blacked-out room with flashing colored lights, a live deejay and other dancers with nothing but fun and fitness on their minds, it’s hard not to.
“I don’t think you get this anywhere else: the energy, the workout, the people. It’s just kind of one-of-a-kind,” says Ian McCabe, 27, a hair colorist and salon owner in the District of Columbia who took his first Fitness 305 class a few months ago when the company started offering classes in the capital after launching in New York. He now attends several classes a week.
305 Fitness, which holds classes in the mornings and evenings, is one of a few emerging exercise programs that capitalize on the physical and mental benefits of night club dancing, while eliminating the less healthy components, such as alcohol and late nights. While 305 Fitness is led by trained instructors who are professional dancers and actors, other dance parties provide the scene and the music — and leave the moves up to you.
Daybreaker, for one, is an organization that throws two-hour morning dance parties for $25 in various cities, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Atlanta. The goal is to create “a community that values camaraderie, self-expression, wellness, mindfulness and mischief,” says Daybreaker co-founder Radha Agrawal, 35. London-based Morning Gloryville – which hosts $20 events in New York and San Francisco – is similar, complete with smoothies, coffee and even massages on site.
As for 305 Fitness, which costs $32 per class in New York and $24 per class in the District, a deejay spins tunes of his or her choice, ranging from Sir Mix-a-Lot’s ”Baby Got Back” to Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.” All the while, instructors like Littles make up routines on the fly, pulling from a repertoire of moves they learn in their 400 hours of training.
“People love to dance … and you see that when people go out at night and have a drink or two — they want to dance,” says 305 Fitness founder Sadie Kurzban, 25. She came up with the idea for the business while dancing at a Miami night club during spring break 2011.
“That’s when it came to me to really fuse these two concepts together,” says Kurzban, who led cardio dance classes as a student at Brown University before winning a business competition to launch 305 Fitness. “Teaching these workout classes, but at the same time, making it a true party and bringing those elements that I love about Miami – the fun, the sexiness, the feeling of freedom, the live music, the deejay, the lights, all of that, into the workout experience.”
Since launching 305 Fitness – named for Miami’s area code – in 2012, the company has grown to host about 50 classes a week in New York and established an outpost in the District of Columbia. The founders of Daybreaker, meanwhile, have plans to bring parties to London, Sao Paulo, Tel Aviv, the District of Columbia, Sydney and Amsterdam.
"It all began as an art project [and] social experiment, and people loved it," Agrawal says. "It’s now become something of a movement."
Dance Your Way to Health and Happiness
The idea of dancing for fitness is not new, says Walter Thompson, a professor of kinesiology, health and nutrition at of Georgia State University who leads an annual fitness trend survey published by the American College of Sports Medicine. There was the aerobics boom in the 1980s, and Zumba took hold in the early 2000s.
“For-profits are really brilliant in the way they package things and repackage things and repackage things,” Thompson says. “And that’s pretty much what’s happening with 305 Fitness and Morning Gloryville – they put a little bit of a different spin on it, but it’s an exercise program that’s been around for a while.”
Thompson says fitness dance parties don’t yet classify as a trend in the eyes of the American College of Sports Medicine because it’s only in a few major cities. “A trend would mean you’d be able to go to any city in the country or virtually anywhere in the world, and you’d be able to find that form of exercise,” he says.
Still, Thompson and others say, the concept is a good one because it’s getting people moving, boosting their moods and spreading the word that exercise can be fun.
“The more that we make fitness activities fun and also the more we make it feel great to be fit, really, the better off we are,” says Angela Smith, past president of the American College of Sports Medicine and an orthopedic surgeon in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
Dancing, in particular, has been linked with all kinds of positive health benefits, including improved heart health and flexibility, as well as reduced depression and anxiety. In one 2013 study in JAMA Pediatrics, for instance, Swedish researchers found that teenage girls with self-blaming issues, who also had physical symptoms like headaches with no medical cause, considered their health better after taking a 75-minute dance class twice a week for eight months. More than 90 percent of the 59 participants considered the experience positive, and the improvements held a year after the intervention.
"The most positive thing about a dance-type workout is that it’s fun and it’s to music," Smith says. "You gain all the benefits of doing something you love – all of those endorphins – plus the aerobic benefit plus the music benefit."
Dancing can also spur weight loss. In one study last year in the American Journal of Health Behavior, 28 overweight and obese women took an hourlong Zumba class three times a week for 16 weeks. By the end of the four months, the women had increased motivation to exercise, improved their aerobic fitness and lost weight and body fat.
What’s more, the noncompetitive nature of the classes – participants are encouraged to add their own flair to the routines and only worry about themselves – might help protect against injury, Smith says. It can also be liberating.
“If you are uncoordinated or nervous, I think it’s just nice to go for it, and you have a great time – you kind of leave your inhibitions at the door,” says McCabe, the 305 Fitness participant. “You’re guaranteed to have a good time and a good workout, so what else can you ask for?”
