Unleash Your Wild Sild

Ain’t nothing wrong with acting like a bunch of animals…

We’re all a little animalistic sometimes. Maybe there’s a huge appetizer spread out at an event, and you haven’t eaten dinner yet, so you attack it. Or maybe you got kind of drunk last weekend and performed some outrageous moves on the dance floor you really wish had never happened. Whatever it is, we all have those same instincts. (Except maybe Gwenyth Paltrow. That lady is a robot without feelings).

So taking advantage and capitalizing on these intrinsic, universal qualities, Equinox came up with the idea for Animal Flow, an entire workout devoted to our inherited wild side. At first, I laughed at the idea. All I could imagine was the scene of Mean Girls at the mall, where the girls fight like wild African animals around the watering hole (well, the water fountain that symbolized the watering hole). But since I was invited to try out the class, I decided to give it a try. At the very least, I’d learn how to master a catfight. Right?

I was wrong. Animal Flow is actually one beast of a workout. Using nothing but our own weight and sliding discs, we got a total body workout that had us mimick animal movements without getting too ridiculous. And with tribal, drum-heavy music fueling the session, it was easy to get into the spirit of things.

Much of our movement focused on various degrees of crawling, or different positions on all fours, squatting and jumping. The two “go to” positions; “Beast” and “Roaring Beast,” had us in a crouched, suspended plank that took everything from my arms, to abs, to thighs working hard to stay in position. There was even a portion of the class where we had to crawl 10 steps forward and back in “Beast” mode, which was one of the most difficult parts.

We spent the beginning of class learning the different movements and putting them together in shorter sequences, and at the end of the workout, we put all of the sequences together first in sets of two, and built progressively from there until our finale.

It’s definitely not your typical fitness class. But despite the name and my expectations surrounding an Equinox specialty class (I kind of expected it to be a tribal-themed Zumba class?), Animal Flow provides a challenging, total-body workout that will keep you sweating and working until the last jump. Try it out – and unleash the beast in you!