Health & Fitness in Athens

Xtreme Fit GA's seasoned trainers run unsculpted bodies through a muscle-making assembly line of intense, small-group workouts and nutrition coaching. Regardless of age, experience, or opinions about who is the best Golden Girl, Xtreme Fit's program is designed for all fitness fanatics, with CrossFit exercises that shun excessive machine use in favor of natural movements and resistance training. Classes are limited to four people to ensure that all students get plenty of individual attention from the instructors and maximize their workouts.

Second to None Group Fitness tones muscles with group training sessions centered on routines inspired by resistance workouts and interval training. Each one-hour mini boot camp works to turn bodies into calorie-incinerating sweat-machines with callisthenic routines, Pilates, sport drills, and core bodywork. Upon attending the first class, each student will receive a defenseless, six-session punch card, enabling them to keep track of their attendance and alleviate aggression via paper violence. Participants of each session should bring a pair of comfortable exercise shoes, an exercise mat, a pair of hand weights (3–8 lbs.), and water.

Equipment: Program uses hydraulic equipment with adjustable resistance. Some body weight exercises may be used
Students should bring: Exercise mats encouraged but not required. Bottle of water & towel
Average class length: Less than 30 minutes
Number of Staff: 1–5
Class location: Indoors only
Established: 2013
Registration required: Yes
Good for beginners: Yes
Guests allowed: No
Parking: Parking lot

Q&A with Nkosi Moyo, Instructor And Massage Therapist

Exercise is challenging, and people frequently give up on their fitness routines. How do you keep clients motivated?
Clients are offered generously discounted massages, based on meeting mutually agreed upon goals. Massage is provided by a licensed massage therapist, voted best massage therapist in Athens for two years in a row (2012 & 2013).[We do] short but effective workouts. Exercises are gentle on joints. Classes are small enough for individualized attention.

When and how did you first develop a passion for fitness?
Many [women I worked with] were always complaining about their weight. None of them were ever happy about watching me eat junk food day after day and never gain a pound. Somewhere along the line I realized that if I was able to get them to follow the same simple steps that I followed, they could actually lose some weight.

"I've always followed in her footsteps," says Shawna Nichols of her mother, Shawnee Goettig. Both women worked in medical care, Nichols with Alzheimer’s patients and Goettig in hospice care. Then, when Nichols joined her mother at Basic Wellness Center, she initially took on the administrative side of the business. But seeing each client walk out the door with a serene smile prodded her toward her mother's path again, and she soon became a massage therapist herself.

The mother-daughter team specializes in medical massage to treat chronic pain, customizing sessions to each client's needs or wingspan. Their hands glide over musculature aided by hypoallergenic lotions with an olive-oil base. Their private treatment rooms promote relaxation with dim lighting and a New Age soundtrack. Aromatherapy augments all treatments, including reflexology sessions and detoxifying footbaths, which relax pores while using an ionic charge to allow the body to release toxins back into the wild.

Aerofit isn't your ordinary fitness studio. Instead of wearing athletic shoes, students go barefoot. Instead of gazing in the mirror, they get up close and personal with the ceiling. And in place of studio floors, there are nothing but trampolines. The trampolines serve as the stage for most of Aerofit's classes, which combine high-flying acrobatics with functional fitness training. Each class teaches a repertoire of basic moves before progressing to more advanced tricks, so beginners need not worry about starting fresh. Though all of the jumping is enough to burn calories on its own, several of the studio's classes mix it up with fun games and circuit training. The instructors make sure to cover safety and injury prevention in every class, explaining that it's actually physically impossible to jump so high you'll never come down.

Within Pure Barre's spacious, mirror-lined studio, transformations are occurring. Through every ballet-inspired movement, students work to sculpt long, lean, lifted muscles as they target the areas of the body women struggle with most, such as the stomach, the seat, and the arms. The regimen goes beyond aesthetic concerns, as well, by ensuring moves are good for the body—a thorough stretching session follows every strength section of the workout, and the classes protect students' joints by avoiding bouncing movements and maintaining a strict no-hopscotch policy. Students even glean a meditative benefit, as the focus required allows them to block out the stresses of life for as long as they're within the studio's mirrored walls.