Calgary Health and Fitness

A ringleader at Venice California’s Muscle Beach, Joe Gold founded World Gym in 1976, creating what would become an iconic spot for Hollywood’s brawniest bunch, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno. Today, that gym is a worldwide franchise spanning more than a dozen countries. Fitness Group Canada’s World Gym in Calgary comes with all the perks clients have come to expect from a World Gym, including a free-weight room stacked with dumbbells, barbells, and plenty of plates. Cardio addicts can head to one of several group classes, such as spotlight cycle, which utilizes stationary bikes for heart-racing, indoor exercise. After a workout, exercisers can grab a towel and a snack or re-energize with a drink from the juice bar.

As pedestrians tote shopping bags or mochas down the shop-lined streets of downtown Calgary, just on the other side of Bodypump Bootcamp's lofty windows small clutches of exercisers thrash though a flurry of motion. Between soft-yellow walls, instructors guide students of all fitness levels into high-intensity exercises designed to offload fat, tone muscles, and improve overall health. On the weekends, mats speckle the hardwood floors as trainers downward dog into yoga and Pilates. In addition to fitness training, the studio's health gurus provide students with nutritional counsel, steering them away from unhealthful habits, such as eating late at night or roller-skating across seven-lane highways.

Sean McCutcheon, the lead trainer at Lean Body Boot Camp, never lets anything get in the way of fitness. Although many obligations vie for his time, Sean always makes room for a workout—and he expects everyone else to do the same.

At 5:30 a.m. on Monday, Sean teaches his first boot-camp class of the week. He mixes up the exercises for each 45-minute session, keeping bodies engaged so that they never plateau. Workouts normally take place inside, on the gym's padded floors, but occasionally happen outside, on the earth's shag carpets. To support overall health, Sean also dishes nutritional advice and joins patrons for 30-minute grocery-store visits.

Self-proclaimed as one of North America's tallest indoor climbing gyms, The Crux Climbing & Bouldering challenges participants of all ages and proficiency levels with 72-foot walls peppered with colour-coded holds and routes. Internationally and nationally certified staff members strap patrons into all necessary rental gear before releasing them to explore more than 12,000 square feet of climbing space. The Crux Climbing & Bouldering's courses—ranging in difficulty from introduction to advanced—instill climbers with the strength and skills to rappel down an 80-foot tower, manoeuvre through a 3,000-square-foot bouldering area, and ascend up multi-pitch routes with their mouths.

Eaglequest Golf oversees half a dozen courses and practice centres throughout Canada, including two driving ranges that have been named in Golf Range Magazine’s Top 100 Golf Ranges in America. These lauded stretches nestle alongside the 9-hole, par 27 course at Coquitlam and the 18-hole, par 65 layout at Coyote Creek, which also landed in the magazine’s Top 100 Golf Practice Centers and Learning Facilities in America. Near this award-winning pair, Eaglequest’s Nanaimo invites club swingers to traverse another 9-hole layout. Next door in Alberta, the Douglasdale Golf Course challenges them to work through 18 fairways while only swinging their clubs 60 times to make par—not counting whacks at rabid caddies.

Alberta is also home to the climate-controlled Eaglequest Golf Dome, where players hit as many range balls as they can during timed practice sessions. Nova Scotia hosts Eaglequest Grandview Golf & Country Club, where 18 wide, bluegrass fairways designed by Bill Robinson in 1988 unfurl in front of bent-grass greens, all updated by Robinson in 2007.

Bow River and its adjacent aquatic arteries join ponds and marshland at Golf Canada Calgary Centre, creating aquatic layouts for the Les Furber–designed, 9-hole, par-3 course and the 18-hole, par-72 all-grass putting course. Hole 9 on the putting course even challenges players with an island green, and those who make it there without getting wet can pretend to be castaways even after the sun has set, thanks to stadium-style lighting.

To gear up for the courses’ myriad challenges, golfers can buckle down at a heated, lighted driving range that ranked in Golf Range Magazine’s 2010 Top 100 Golf Ranges in America. The swingers practice their long game from 52 enclosed tee boxes, aiming at target greens or clouds shaped like flag pins. Nearby, putters take the stage at a short-game practice area with a 4,000-square-foot putting green, a 3,500-square-foot pitching and chipping green, and greenside and fairway practice bunkers. Golfers can also hone their game in high-definition golf simulators, which unlock the fairways of legendary courses such as Pebble Beach and Pinehurst, or enroll in lessons with PGA of Canada pros led by award-winning instructor Jay Myren.