Cumberland Gyms and Fitness

City Golf's managing owner and head golf professional, Gary Parker, brings a Class A PGA certification and more than two decades of teaching experience to City Golf, earning him Boston magazine's Best Golf Pro in 2007. Gary and his team of PGA-certified aces preside over year-round golfing activities inside City Golf Walpole and City Golf Boston's studios and their modern golf-training facilities, including a brand new downtown Boston location. Pros tailor instruction to individuals during lessons to help straighten out swings with the assistance of Dartfish video swing analysis, which reveals every ill-timed motion, errant clubface position, and argyle-clad poltergeist affecting each shot. A virtual-reality simulator recreates the environments of more than 30 legendary courses, and a 280-square-foot putting green challengers players' ability to read breaking greens.

A fourth location in Brighton is set to open in September of 2013. The 5,500 square foot state-of-the-art facility will include four virtual golf simulators, an indoor driving range, a 2,000 square foot putting green, and teaching areas hosting PGA video lessons.

The fitness aficionados at Training Ground aren’t content to slog through dusty workout regimens. Instead, they introduce exercisers to TRABOKI, a fresh approach to fitness co-created by the facility’s owners that fuses elements of personal training, boot camp, and kickboxing into one intense total-body workout. Utilizing functional movements to build strength, TRABOKI shakes up uninspired routines with a new workout every day, keeping muscles more delightfully confusing than an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba! directed by David Lynch. A similarly novel approach to exercise, Tabata classes whisk groups through 30-minute power sessions of high-energy interval training. The results gained from both TRABOKI and Tabata carry over to Training Ground’s other exercise offerings, including personal-training programs.

To help women achieve their fitness goals, the certified personal trainers at Get in Shape for Women focus on four areas: weight training, cardio training, nutrition, and accountability. Each of their small-group sessions are tailored to each exerciser. The trainers modify exercises to suit up to four ladies' fitness levels, beginning by calibrating 30 minutes of strength-training drills—such as free weights, lunges, and squats—to each student's abilities. Then, they do 25 minutes of cardio—the trainers might start beginners with a walk on the treadmill or light elliptical training, and challenge more advanced exercisers to high-intensity interval-training sessions for increased results.

The trainers supplement the group workouts with nutritional planning centered around the concept of eating six small, balanced meals six days a week. They set aside the seventh day for a bit of indulgence, be it eating a favorite sweet or lusting openly after bacon. To track ladies' progress toward reaching their goals, the trainers measure their weight and body-fat percentage every two weeks.

Housed in a multisport training facility, Milford Sports Center's cadre of professional coaches oversees fitness classes and practice spaces to help athletes groom their games of golf, baseball, and softball. Former Boston Red Sox catcher and two-time MLB All-Star Rich Gedman headlines the Center’s baseball program, which encompasses private and semiprivate lessons and an annual summer camp that teaches little leaguers the basics of hitting, base running, defense, and seed spitting. For more independent training, hitters can crack line drives in the Center’s 11 batting cages, which offer both softball- and baseball-pitching machines.

Piercing drives echo from the Center’s indoor golf-training facilities, where players hone their swings away from the threat of inclement weather or flash-mobbing water hazards. The Full Swing Golf simulator lets clubbers seek out pars on digital replicas of 64 world-famous courses, including Pebble Beach, Bay Harbor, and the Old Course at St. Andrews. Fitness trainers also guide guests through a circuit of up-tempo, rhythmic exercises in Zumba classes.

Team Fitness Franklin boasts 16,000 square feet of space that encourages a healthy lifestyle. Expansive rooms with sleek hardwood or padded flooring host group fitness classes that include spin, yoga, Pilates, Turbo Barre, and Beat Box, a boot-camp-style cardio and toning class. A number of onsite amenities provide an upscale gym experience. Shower towels, workout towels, and towels used to wipe down equipment or your gym partner are all complimentary. Post-workout, guests can climb into the steam room and let their muscles relax or stop by the smoothie bar for a quick pick-me-up.

A Mass Tour Card grants golfers one round of golf at each of six Massachusetts courses. Golfers must pay the cart fee at each course, after which they can steer their steed over the upper Cape Cod charm of The Brookside Club's course or park their cart in the rustic covered bridge at Maplegate Country Club. Quail Ridge Country Club's course takes golfers through scenic conservation land and stone relics of its previous life as a farm.

The nine-hole course at Lombardi's Hillside Country Club challenges clubbers with water hazards on six holes, whereas Bradford Country Club's difficult, par 70 layout tests putting strokes with smooth bentgrass greens. The sixth course, Norwood Country Club, invites players to smash shots and stare down flagsticks across 6,009 yards of relatively flat terrain with medium-sized greens.