Hartford Gyms and Fitness

Since 1968, the NHL-regulation ice surface at Veterans Memorial Skating Rink has hosted skaters for a bevy of blade-footed endeavors that range from recreational public-skate sessions to speed-skating lessons. For year-round open skating, participants can bring their own skates or don a pair of comfortable Riedell Soft rentals before carving figure 8s and chiaroscuro sketches of Wayne Gretzky into the ice surface. Other ice offerings include hockey and figure-skating lessons, and after skating sessions, a battery-powered Zamboni and electric edger smooth the ice's surface with minimal impact on the environment.

Each instructor at Evolution Pilates is certified through Stott Pilates, which requires a minimum of 200 hours of training. Backed by this certification, the instructors lead private and group classes for all types of exercisers, from beginners to experienced athletes. The classes incorporate equipment such as reformers, which help exercisers build lean muscles.

The instructors at Accelerated Fitness Solutions create workouts with a scientific approach to fitness that helps clients achieve dramatic fat loss. The center’s crew of nationally certified trainers challenges bodies through high-impact, results-driven workouts that are available in a group setting or one on one. During a standard session, exercisers can be seen hurling medicine balls into the air, pulling cargo ropes, or gnawing on iron ore to make their own kettlebells. Bolstering the sinew-shaping workouts is the FirstLine Therapy program, a holistic 12-week nutrition plan run by a certified nutritionist and tailored to each student.

Armed with certifications from the celebrated yoga guru, Bikram Choudhury, Bikram Yoga Glastonbury's band of yoga instructors guides students of all abilities through the 26-posture practice. Students begin the 90-minute workout with a deep-breathing exercise before moving into a sequence of standing and seated postures designed to improve strength, flexibility, and balance. Balmy temperatures help students sink into deep stretches, eliminate harmful toxins from the body, and keep confrontational snowmen at bay. Though challenging, students of all experience and fitness levels can tailor the poses to meet their needs, with the idea that through dedicated practice, students may see a decrease in weight, improved sleep, and greater flexibility.

After Brian Ayers earned his degree in fitness management and went to work in a corporate fitness setting, he discovered a new kind of training—one that involved challenges such as boxing, mud races, and obstacle courses. "I moved away from using machines and dumbbell exercises to exercises that will get people in shape for more athletic things," he says. In June 2011, he decided to open a studio dedicated to the philosophy of embracing challenge, and Rugged Fitness was born.

Traditional machines do not exist at Rugged Fitness. Instead, there's plenty of space for boot-camp workouts, a pull-up area with TRX bands, and 11 heavy bags for boxing classes, which never exceed 11 pupils. Outside, giant tires patiently wait to be lifted and flipped, and an obstacle course with monkey bars, army-crawl netting, and a climbing wall dares visitors to push themselves to their limit. During the interval-based boot camps, students might heft sledgehammers one minute and drop for pushups the next. Because activities focus on increments of time, rather than specific weights or numbers of reps, everyone can calibrate the exercises to their ability level. And the students do have a range of abilities—some are fitness aficionados, whereas others are complete beginners, and one student dropped more than 100 pounds.

To challenge and encourage students, Brian gathered a staff of experienced coaches, which includes a former professional boxer and an amateur mixed-martial-arts fighter. "Our coaches are all very hands-on," he says, "Everything they they're putting you through, they've done. It's not just someone sitting back with a cheeseburger telling you to do pushups." That spirit of camaraderie extends throughout Rugged Fitness's clientele. "You're all struggling through these crazy workouts we're going to put you through," Brian says. Even outside the gym, members frequently band together to complete mud runs, obstacle courses, and marathon Macarena sessions.

To supplement the classes—which include kickboxing, kettlebell conditioning, and the once-a-week Rugged Boot Camp challenge—the trainers offer one-on-one nutrition counseling. An online nutrition program helps steer guests toward healthier diets, analyzing what they're eating based on the calories, nutritional components, and number of Flintstone vitamins hiding in foods.

Muvement is as much a gym as it is a physical-fitness lab. Certified strength and conditioning specialist Michael Houle and Jill Houle, who holds a BS in nutritional science, team up to invest clients with practical workout regimens and an intimate knowledge of how the body works on a physiological level. Before new clients lift their first weight at the studio, a personal trainer consults with them about their exercise and health history and runs physical assessments and lab tests to identify potential obstacles related to the immune, digestive, hormonal, and detoxification systems. Next, Jill draws on her background as a professional nutritionist to recommend a diet suited to the client’s unique metabolism, and explains how the body breaks down calories and nutrients. Even their fitness regimens take a holistic approach. Whether in group or personal-training sessions, functional movements using resistance bands, TRX suspension, and kettlebells incorporate multiple muscle groups and joints into each exercise, building a physique more balanced than two eggs riding a seesaw during the spring equinox.