Stallings Gyms and Fitness

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.

Dianna Akar isn't the least bit intimidated by the fact that her clients all start at different fitness levels. On the contrary, she relishes the challenge, tailoring her programs to align with each of their goals. Akar is a certified personal trainer, using her experience to helm outdoor boot-camp sessions for both men and women that draw from yoga, aerobics, plyometrics, strength training, and chimney sweeping.

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.

Led by seasoned, passionate trainer Julie Sawyer—whose credentials include being a York County 2011 Sports Hall of Fame inductee and being featured on World Fitness Elite TV—Tuff Girl Bootcamps' classes help ladies attain more toned and svelte physiques. The schedule-friendly 30-minute express workouts kick-start fitness forays more efficiently than clipping jumper cables to your feet as Sawyer leads ladies through moves such as dead lifts, pushups, lunges, and planks. Synced to high-energy music, the exercises call upon equipment including dumbbells, kettlebells, and resistance bands and are readily modified for every fitness level and any preexisting joint conditions. In addition to Sawyer's constant support, the studios' mirrored walls help fitness-seekers maintain proper form while practicing exercises and transitioning into the chorus-line portion of each workout.

Kelly Wood started her career with nothing but a vision. That, and a handful of boas. Toting a traveling pole, the single mother of four began to conduct private pole-dancing parties within the living rooms of local Charlotte women before opening up her own private studio, S Curve Fitness. Today, Kelly's studio bustles with both aspiring students and seasoned pole-dancing instructors during classes throughout the week.

Exposed brick walls surround the forest of chrome poles that spring up from the studio's hardwood floors, from which instructors lead classes in both pole technique and pole fitness. They even offer onsite private or semiprivate lessons, where they set up their traveling poles in the comfort of a student's own home or spot in a particularly lengthy airport security line.

Led by two ACE-certified personal trainers, Carolina Adventure Boot Camp takes men and women of any age or fitness level through regularly scheduled 60-minute outdoor cardio romps. Groups are limited in size for each session, helping students get to know one another and allowing trainers to personalize each exercise to individual abilities. The bare-bones structure of each class builds routines around body-weight resistance, running, yoga, and obstacle courses, requiring each participant to bring only water, a yoga mat, and a pair of dumbbells. When not providing positive reinforcement, instructors counsel students on nutritional matters, helping craft nutritious meal plans and sharing healthful cookie recipes that replace chocolate chips with Flintstones vitamins.