Health & Fitness in Knik-Fairview

Ever since The Alaska Club opened its first location in 1986, they've been striving to serve their members by adding amenities, classes, and opening new locations. Though each location’s offerings vary, they supplement their well-stocked fleets of cardio machines and strength equipment with cycling studios, climbing walls, basketball courts, swimming pools, and play centers for the kids. The club also offers spa services including hydromassage beds, tanning, and saunas.

Group fitness classes include yoga, step aerobics, and Pilates, and personal trainers stand at the ready to help clients focus on fitness goals. The clubs also offer swim lessons and summer camps for kids, setting in stone their commitment to making The Alaska Club a place for the whole family, not the half-formed family, which needs at least seven more years to gestate in the laboratory incubator.

Body Renew Alaska's 12 boot-camp sessions (three classes a week) help participants shed pounds and build muscle in a group fitness environment. Each one-hour session, available at four different locations, will push participants' workouts to the next level to produce intense results in one month. Augment your muscle chiseling with six months of full access to eBodyLive, where users can utilize a customized online food and workout journal and four one-on-one video chats with a nationally certified trainer who reviews and guides each fitness program. The workouts—sent as detailed instructions with video clips and images—can be sent to most phones, allowing participants to access their fitness regimen from the same device they use to arrange meetings of the Millard Fillmore Appreciation Society.

Drs. Lauren Evans, Jacob Frank, and Kara Reynolds protect the power of sight at Wolf Eye Center. The trio of talented optometrists—who studied ocular disease during their residencies—cares for eyes with everything from standard eye exams to glaucoma treatments. In addition to caring for adult patients, the team of eye professionals also treats little ones, helping correct lazy eyes and outfitting budding athletes with sports goggles.

While the doctors detect disease and calibrate prescriptions, the center’s knowledgeable staff helps clients peruse a selection of frames from the likes of Gucci, Coach, and Vera Wang. Frames are filled with thin, high-index lenses or Transitions lenses, which shift from clear to tinted when exposed to sun or a pageant queen’s sequined evening gown.

Stroller Fitt AK transforms baby carriages into powerful exercise tools in circuit-style workouts that help build both muscles and friendships. Led by a NESTA-certified fitness instructor and CPR-trained mom, each class corrals buggy-toting parents, grandparents, and nannies for 60 minutes of calorie-targeting moves and motivational whinnies. Appropriate for exercisers of all levels, including expectant mothers, each class begins with a meet-and-greet that raises heart rates and builds community. Students build strength as they alternate arm-toning stroller pushes with core-focused calisthenics such as planks, sit-ups, and standing oblique crunches. Resistance bands help moms-to-be build strength safely, and outdoor jogs fill lungs with air fresher than a mentholated blow-dryer. Participants may bring their little ones to class, where kid-friendly exercises cultivate healthy lifestyles and rides in the stroller keep babies from test-driving the family dune buggy.

Founded by dancer Judi Sheppard Missett in 1969, Jazzercise and the network that it formed has mushroomed into more than 7,800 instructors teaching 32,000 weekly classes in 32 countries. Much like the opening arguments in any trial, every 60-minute session begins with a gentle warm-up to limber up limbs before jumping into an easy-to-follow aerobic-dance routine. Moves blend elements of jazz dance with kickboxing and the core toning elements of Pilates and yoga. Top 40 hits, jazz, country, funk, rock, blues and hip-hop pluck at brain strings to get bodies energized as sessions transition into a muscle-toning segment performed with dumbbells. Workouts conclude with a stretch and cooldown.

Members at Curves, a fitness center designed exclusively for women, rotate around a circuit of hydraulic resistance machines that have been designed to work with female bodies and promote weight loss, protect against osteoporosis, and deal with arthritis. An experienced trainer is always nearby to help manage participants’ machine maneuvering and muscle making. Instead of fiddling with weight stacks and losing momentum, the hydraulic machines use your own body weight, fitness level, and aerodynamic water bottle to create resistance that matches abilities, decreasing the risk of soreness or injury. Because traditional lift-and-lower motions create bulky muscles, each machine uses push-and-pull motions to create toned, lean muscles perfect for crushing a grapefruit without looking like you can.