What’s your idea of a good workout? A combination of cardio and strength moves utilizing state-of-the-art treadmills and rowers, all while tracking your exertion and heart rate on TV screens? Burning more calories even after you leave the gym? If so, then Orangetheory Fitness is for you.

Orangetheory Fitness is an interval workout backed by science, designed to keep your heart rate in a target zone that spikes metabolism and increases your EPOC or afterburn calories. In theory, the more you can keep your heart in that zone, the more splat points you get (more on that later), and the more calories you will burn after the workout is over. It’s a little complicated, but that Wikipedia link on EPOC explains it pretty well. Nothing like citing to a good Wikipedia article. Erin Andrews (another wiki link) is one of their spokespeople, so obviously it works; look at her! Also, she’s a Gator so I’m biased. Throughout the workout, you wear a heart rate monitor, or you can choose not to, and you can track calories burned, percentage of max heart rate, and OTF “splat points”, based on the amount of time you spend in the orange HR zone. My favorite part of this workout is that the point is not to burn out and go “all out” in the red zone the whole time. You leave feeling like you got an awesome workout, but you don’t leave feeling like you are going to die, or barf in the lobby on the way out. This has happened to me before (cough cough TONEHOUSE).

Anyway, as I mentioned last week, I recently went to OTF with my brother when I went to Washington DC, and we had a blast. One of my best friends from college is a head trainer for OTF and now trains and manages the trainers of the region, so I knew I was in good hands taking her class. This was not my first rodeo, however. I had been to Orangetheory a few times before in three different states: New York, Virginia, and Florida. The cool thing about OTF is that every day, the workout is the same in every studio around the country, so it doesn’t matter if you are traveling often. But even better, the workout is different each day! I have been to a class where they had an endurance day, a class that was a sprint-based power class, and a combo day. I have never been to this thing they call “Tornado Tuesday,” nor do I ever plan to go, because I do not hate myself. HA. Reddit has a glossary of OTF terms if you can’t keep up. Anyway, point of this story is, even though I’ve gone 5 times, I have never been bored.

When I went with my brother, it added a competition aspect that I did not even know I had in me. My brother is incredibly competitive. I’m talking, “throw a tantrum and leave the table during a game of monopoly” competitive. Me? Not so much. In my 4 previous times at OTF, I had only worn the heart rate monitor once. It is interesting to track and see my statistics after, but it’s not too important for me to watch it during the class. For my brother, though, it was not an option. So I strapped my heart rate monitor on under the strap of my sports bra, and readied myself for a massive competition. My brother has literally run the length of Israel before, whereas I have run one half marathon and sprained my ankle twice in the past 3 months. I was prepared to lose. But I didn’t let him know that!

The workout of the day was pretty complicated to follow, but we warmed up on the rowers, then started with floor exercises, which were demoed on the screens. I mostly followed the screens, but called Julie over to explain a few times. She didn’t treat me like a complete idiot, so that was a plus. I think some other people were lost, too. There were 3 rounds of 3 exercises, and you could pick the order. We used dumbbells, a step, and the TRX to do a combination of moves working all major muscle groups. Then after 25 minutes, we switched to cardio intervals on the treadmill then rower. After the floor section, my brother and I each only had 3 splat points, and the goal is 12-20. As I said above, you get a splat point for each minute you spend training in the orange zone. Clearly we had our work cut out for us on the treadmills.

My brother stared me down from his adjacent treadmill with a look in his eyes that could only be described as, “you’re going down, bitch.” Or maybe it was, “you’re going down, sis,” but either way, he made it clear he was playing to win. And sure enough, I had my eyes on the screen tracking his splat points more than I had my eyes on the treadmill. Probs dangerous, in hindsight. Anyway, my brother skipped his second interval on the rower to add more points and stay on the treadmill, aka HE CHEATED. He swears he just read the workout wrong, which is possible, because, like I said it was pretty complicated, but I choose to say he cheated. Anyway, joke was on him because while he was slaving away on the treadmill at 12.0 MPH, I was at a casual 5.8, and since I’m such a worse runner, my heart rate was the same as his, and soon enough, we were neck and neck at 14 points even. With 2 minutes left of class, I was ahead 17-16, but he caught up with seconds to spare, and we tied at 17 splat points.

Overall, OTF is super fun. I love the idea of having a workout that changes every day because I have a bit of workout A.D.D. and I get bored quickly. Watching your points go up on the screen adds to the feeling of accomplishment, and even though I wish I had beat my brother, I still feel like I had a great workout and left completely sweaty. I worked off at least one of my post-workout-sake-bombs. It was extra fun to have Julie as our instructor because she grew up with my brother too, and felt comfortable egging him on over the microphone. Plus, she always has a fab playlist. I highly recommend checking it out. Most first-timers are free if you’re local. In Manhattan it’s $20 for your first class because everything in this godforsaken city is expensive, but what else is new? It’s $319 unlimited for a month in NYC, which is out of my budget, but if you go 4 times a week, it works out to less than $20/class, which is cheaper than any other studio in NYC. Try it out and see if you can beat my brother’s and my splat points!