Charlotte Health and Fitness

Breakaway Sports is a full-service indoor athletics arena. The rink hosts recreation leagues and competitive tournaments for inline hockey, often with teams coming in from all parts of the country to compete. They also schedule public skating sessions on Friday and Saturday nights, which can be a fun activity for friends or a more aerobically effective date activity than polishing your butter-knife collection. When skaters and hockey players give up the rink, they make way for indoor sports such as soccer, lacrosse, and volleyball as well as birthday parties. Breakaway is also equipped with meeting rooms that have TVs and WiFi.

Founded in 1913 by a team of 15 prominent physicians and business leaders in New York, the American Cancer Society (ACS) aimed to raise awareness about cancer and find ways to treat it. During that time the society created the iconic Sword of Hope—a caduceus entwined with serpents—and started a movement that would transform cancer from a death sentence into a survivable disease.

Today, the American Cancer Society funds research, raises awareness, and sponsors support programs through 12 chartered divisions and more than 900 local offices across the country. In the past several decades, ACS has funded significant research leading to a cure for cancer, and supported more than 46 researchers who have gone on to win the Nobel Prize. ACS’s programs include the Reach to Recover program, which matches survivors with someone suffering from cancer to help share experience and create hope, and the Road to Recovery program, which provides free rides to and from treatments.

Instructors at Charlotte Martial Arts Academy pride themselves on building confidence and self-discipline in their adult and youth students learning judo, jiujitsu, and other martial arts. These qualities are foregrounded in the Academy creed, which emphasizes "discipline, honor, peace, and respect." Not only does every class cover the proper way to kick, punch, and karate-chop a block of wood into two perfectly whittled black belts, but each also includes lessons on health and fitness. Safety, however, is always the top priority. Though a number of distinct martial arts styles are taught, instructors also combine techniques to equip pupils with the skills for real-life self-defense scenarios.

Senseis Michael Price and Mary Roberts don't merely call upon their years of experience when they're on the mat; they also train continuously to keep their self-defense and teaching skills sharp. In addition to their class curricula, they also also host private birthday parties where a karate lesson, cake, and decorations create a memorable occasion.

Certified personal trainer Thor Colberg refuses to define the word challenge, as he’s found through experience that one person’s molehill is another’s Mt. Everest. In any given boot-camp session, he might have to work with a new mother, a competitive athlete, and a first-time exerciser at the same time. To accommodate all of these men and women of differing ages and experience levels, he adjusts his regimens to fit each individual and makes doubly sure that no camper is ever left behind on a run or forced to act as a bridge on an obstacle course. During these 45-minute sessions, he leads calisthenics and light weightlifting routines that simultaneously accommodate and test his students. Drawing on extensive summer camp-counseling experience, he also leads boot-camp sessions for kids.

All of Colberg’s services tend to include a nutritional aspect, as he is also a certified nutrition consultant who endorses a holistic approach to health.

Though CrossFit Huntersville's certified trainers come from diverse competitive backgrounds, including Olympic weightlifting, professional motorsports, and tennis, they all have one thing in common: a passion for the CrossFit program's blend of varied, functional movements. Workouts change from day to day, but often incorporate running, jumping, pressing objects over the head, deadlifting, and rowing—all deemed "functional" exercises because they focus on movements that the body does naturally. Each workout of the day (WOD) is scalable to suit any level of fitness.

The family-owned CrossFit affiliate is free of mirrors to thwart self-judgment. Barbells, pull-up bars, kettlebells, and plyo boxes take the place of typical gym staples such as cardio machines and cardboard cutouts of Mr. T.

At Trim Up, a gym run for and by women, trainees exercise independently on meticulously cleaned machinery or bask in the communal vibes of workout classes in disciplines such as yoga, Pilates, and Zumba. The gym’s whole-body vibration plates stimulate rarely used fast-twitch muscle fibers, working 98%–100% of muscles up to 3,000 times per minute, a feat usually only achievable when measured in dog minutes. The center’s detox diet retrains stomachs to crave healthy foods by sifting out late-onset allergens. Members can also enjoy discounted onsite sunless spray tans, which bronze skin to a choice of three shades with Mystic Tan’s MyMyst System.