You know what I always dreamed of? Using bungee cords hung from the ceiling for an hour-long cardio and toning class that kept me engaged and sweating the whole time. JK, I never dreamed of it because I didn’t even know it was possible, but FitForFreeNYC made my non-dream become a reality, because she came through yet again with a freebie at Spiderbands!
Ever since I took a free yoga class and free BollyX class from following Alexa Lippman’s blog and Instagram, I have been keeping a close eye on her posts, and it has paid off again and again. This past week was definitely the best yet. On November 27th, she posted a boomerang and said that if you created an account during the month of November, the first class would be totally free until December 28. That meant I had 3 days to claim the class! I dropped all of my Macy’s Parade and Thanksgiving plans and signed up STAT. I also told 8 of my friends to sign up. Five of them did, too! We decided to take a class together and we even set calendar reminders to sign up right when the spots opened, because all classes for the week open up at 1:00 pm on Mondays. Long story short, all of my friends bailed (literally, all 5 of them), but I went anyway, by myself, and it was a BLAST. AND a fabulous workout!
Generally the first class is $20. You may have missed the opportunity for a free class, but the good news is, for the month of December, it’s BOGO! (I picked this tip up from FitForFree as well.) At $17/class, that’s even less than the first class special. And trust me, you’ll want to do it more than once.
The Spiderbands location has two studios in it, which have different bands in them. The downstairs studio is for Spiderbands, the original band. There are five different possible classes with those bands. The upstairs one is Spider Flyzone, where the pace is slower so you can perfect your technique and work on acrobatic skills, either with or without a partner. When I walked into the Union Square location, they were super nice and inviting, gave me a tour of the studios and the locker room (VERY modern and clean), and explained the lockers to me. They also informed me that cell phones were not allowed in the rooms at all, which made me thankful I was early so I could snap some quick shots of the place before we started!
Even on the original Spiderbands, there are five different options of classes, some using trampolines and even boxing bags! Since it was my very first class, I decided to go for the Signature Spiderbands, taught by the one and only CREATOR of the band itself, Franci Cohen. The bands have only one adjustment: the height of the handles on the bands can either be on high, or low. Being 5’11”, clearly I was high (DUH LONG LEGS big city). Then I was ready to go. Franci explained that to keep things simple, each segment of the class would be four moves, and she would teach one, practice it, and add one on at a time. We started with a cardio warmup, which followed the same 4-move format. We began by jumping with our hands on the bar of the band, doing different movements from things like spider jumps (like a side to side skater jump), and jumping jacks, and running forward and back, all while pushing on the resistance of the bands with our arms. I found out quickly that the upper body and cardio were going to be the tough parts. With all of my spinning, the squats were nothing compared to the constant resistance on my shoulders and arms from the pressure of trying to hold the band down against the resistance from the ceiling. The four-move-max really helped because I could concentrate more on the movements and good form than on remembering the next move. I did enjoy the fact that it seemed a little choreographed, since I am a fan of step aerobics and other dance-y-type things, it kept things interesting to change up the moves. However, since it was a max of 4 moves to remember at a time, it didn’t take a very coordinated person to catch on.
The floor of the studio was very bouncy, which is helpful for knees, but I was a little bit worried about my ankle stability on the one leg jumping movements, since I had a double sprain earlier in the year. Overall, though, the floor made it more fun, and we were able to do a larger range of things, with bigger range of motion. For example, my favorite move of the class was when we held on the bar, walked backwards, dropped our butts down to the floor, rolled back like we were going to do a backward somersault, touched our toes to the bar, and then rolled back up to standing position, all without letting go of the bar. I got stuck on the floor the first time, but Franci cued that if we backed up further, the bands would have tighter resistance which would help us get back up, and sure enough, it worked. There were 25 available spots in the class, but we only had about 14 people, which was great because Franci could walk around and help each of us out! 4 of those empty bands were from my friends who bailed! THANKS FRIENDS!
Overall, I left the class super sweaty and I had a BLAST! The class went by FAST, ended with 5 minutes of tough ab moves, also utilizing the Spiderbands and arms, by sitting on the floor and doing different moves like variations of reverse crunches, and I was sore for a few days. I would definitely recommend going back. In fact, I may snap a BOGO 2 more class before that deal expires in 4 days!
