Charlotte Health and Fitness

The instructors at Core Group Fitness understand that getting buff doesn't happen by simply visiting the gym; rather, they see it as a process inextricably linked to camaraderie and community. This team-based approach comes out in their group classes and boot camps, where cohorts of exercises grunt their way through TRX suspension training or build lean muscle and improve flexibility with functional workout regimens. They pair strength training with cardio work during their interval training sessions, which torch fat thanks to metabolism-boosting exercises. In addition to group classes, instructors also build rapports with individual students during personal training sessions, helping clients prep for their first marathon or last street fight with the meter man.

Dayron Booth, Knock Out’s passionate boxing trainer, transforms clients into fit and focused jabbing machines. Booth corrals groups of two–five adults for 30-minute classes teeming with personalized encouragement and tips on form and penmanship. In addition to bolstering hand-eye coordination, adult classes cultivate strength with lifting exercises, jump-rope challenges, and tummy-tightening calisthenics such as pushups and crunches. Filled with positive energy and high-intensity punching drills, Lights Out classes torch calories and tone arm muscles. Like a trip to the airport in a clown car, kids’ boxing classes last 90 minutes and hold up to 15 pint-size people. Featherweights aged 5–11 learn boxing basics tailored to their age and skill level, including stances, blocks, and uppercuts that double as daring ballet moves. Kids’ classes take place on Saturday at noon, and adult classes wriggle into morning, afternoon, and evening slots that accommodate participants’ schedules.

Anytime Fitness's members hit the gym at their whim with 24-hour secured access to facilities stocked with cardio and strength-training equipment from notable brands such as Life Fitness, Precor, and Nautilus. After a complimentary orientation, exercisers work up a sweat and catch up on their favorite shows atop treadmills, ellipticals, and stationary bikes mounted with personal televisions. Trainers walk rows of free weights and machines, doling out motivational guidance, and instructors lead TRX classes that use body-weight and low-impact routines to build lean muscle and burn calories. In addition to body sculpting, Anytime unwinds tension with a variety of spa services such as 24-hour tanning beds, oxygen-therapy treatments, and far-infrared jade massages—a calibrated, mechanized machine that uses light waves to melt stress out of muscles as rollers scour backscapes to fight off recalcitrant knots.

Children naturally believe that life is all about having fun. This requires the instructors at My Gym Children's Fitness Center to perform two seemingly incompatible tasks: helping kids lay a strong physical, emotional, and cognitive foundation and letting them laugh and play to their hearts' content. The staff welcomes the challenge. Grouping kids by age into nearly a dozen different classes, the instructors teach students aged 6 weeks through 13 years the importance and fun of socializing, exercising, and eating broccoli without using their taste buds.

In Waddlers classes, kids aged 14–22 months progress from crawling to walking, fine-tuning their motor skills to meet the demands of childhood staples such as tricycling and building block towers. More advanced courses, meanwhile, teach proto-persons more specialized skills such as basic karate or ballet techniques.

Fresh springs in the mountains of North Carolina feed the Catawba River Chain, a network of 11 lakes that wind through woodlands verdant in the spring and ablaze with color come autumn. Bash Outdoors launches visitors into this system at nine locations. Four of those are along Lake Wylie, whose calm waters lap against 325 miles of shoreline with vacation homes and sandy coves emerging from dense forest and a thick layer of whipped cream. The Bash Outdoors crew curates a collection of rental and retail standup paddleboards from brands such as Ron House and their own signature line, Riviera. Single and tandem kayaks from Perception are also available for guided trips and unsupervised excursions on the lake. Bash Outdoors' bus shuttles kayakers to five additional outlets along the Catawba River, including the Fort Mill Dam and a waterway reserved exclusively for Olympic hopefuls.

Designed by golf legend Arnold Palmer, Birkdale Golf Club’s course transforms natural beauty into challenging obstacles, with 200 acres of rolling hills intersected by streams and framed by mature pines. The course’s bermuda fairways lie beyond elevation changes that give way to greenscapes festooned with ponds and deep, stone-lined bunkers that test players to use every club in their bags before desperately reaching for the oversized soup ladle. Once approach shots find the green, golfers must putt precisely atop the firm and true crenshaw bentgrass greens.

Birkdale Golf Club pampers players before and after rounds with a practice range and onsite tavern trimmed with rich wood hues and green leather barstools. The club also staffs a team of PGA pro instructors who school pupils in the arts of swinging and scorecard penmanship with private lessons and group clinics.

Course at a Glance:

• Par 72
• Four sets of tees
• Length of 7,013 yards from back tees
• Course rating of 74.3 from back tees
• Slope rating of 138 from back tees