Before Pure Power Boot Camp owner Lauren Brenner moved to
the West Coast, she decided to test the Gold Coast. "I'm a Long Island girl," said Brenner, a native of Great Neck. "I was supposed to open in L.A. this year, but I wanted to do it first where I grew up."
Brenner opened her original Boot Camp studio on 21st Street in Manhattan in January 2004. Decked out to look like a real military boot camp, complete with ropes, obstacles and sandbags, the gym might have been dismissed as a gimmick had not Brenner fashioned a tough workout to go with it.
Modeled after the Army's "confidence course"at Fort Knox, Ky. (which Brenner was allowed to observe), the regimen forced participants, who had to dress in military fatigues, to run, climb and hurtle themselves around the room while being exhorted in not-so-dulcet tones by instructors, all of them former or current Marines hired by Brenner.
It worked. In the fickle fitness world of Manhattan, new is generally perceived as better, and Pure Power Boot Camp was definitely something new. The facility garnered extensive publicity, in no small part because of the photogenic Brenner, who was soon popping up everywhere from the pages of Men's Fitness magazine to segments on the "Today" show.
Test before "West"
For a burgeoning fitness celebrity, the next moves would have been predictable: DVD, book, maybe a TV show. Certainly, a move to Los Angeles, where she might attract some movie star client, whose presence would put the true imprimatur of "hot" on Pure Power.
All of which may yet happen for Brenner. But first, the ex-Wall Street trader had a different challenge in mind. "I wanted to take on the soccer moms," she jokes.
Brenner knew that Long Islanders are willing to pay for the pursuit of fitness, provided the workout is sufficiently challenging. So when a 6,500- square-foot building on the Long Island Expressway Service Road in Jericho became available, she jumped at the opportunity. Pure Power Boot Camp Long Island opened Feb. 25, and Brenner's experience with it provides an interesting contrast between physical culture in the city and in the suburbs.
The different ways people use a gym, for example, became apparent to Brenner the first day. "In the city's it's individuals," Brenner said. "Here, they come in groups." Indeed, many of Pure Power's Long Island clients are women who live near each other and whose kids go to the same schools. Another change was the time of day when most clients train. At the Jericho facility, her 9 and 10 a.m. classes are packed. She also has earlier classes, generally filled with people wanting to get a workout before work. Then things slow down a bit, until right after work, around 5:30.
In the city, midmorning is dead, lunchtime is big. And, Brenner says, "My 6, 7 and 8 p.m. classes in Manhattan are standing room only."
Different kind of "panting"
Although she jokes about the soccer moms, Brenner admits she had some trepidation, particularly the first day, when several women who showed up refused to wear the military-issue fatigues that Pure Power participants don during the standard hourlong workout. They wanted the pants baggier and with a trendy-looking drawstring. Brenner was eventually forced to comply. "They made me nuts over the pants," she said.
But the women's concern with fashion belied a toughness and work ethic that was evident at a recent Monday morning class, as Brenner's two instructors put 16 women through their paces - running laps around the rubberized track; doing pull-ups, sprinting up a steep ramp, struggling over a water hazard and, at the end, doing sit-ups with arms linked (one of those team-building exercises).
"It's totally, totally different than other workouts I've done," said Franceen Silverman of Old Westbury, who saw the Pure Power sign go up during the winter, stopped in to see what the gym was all about and has been attending morning classes four times a week. (Members buy a package of 24 sessions for $1,032.) "I love the camaraderie; I love the intensity," she says. "And she's so positive and encouraging."
Instructor Dennis Hays of Massapequa says he was certain, at first, that these women wouldn't cut it. "I thought everybody would quit in about two seconds," admits the muscular former Marine. But nobody has. "They like it," he says. "We feed off their energy."
As Brenner watched the 16 women in her morning "platoon" call out their rep count in unison while doing their team sit-ups, she expressed relief. So far, L.I. before L.A. seems to have been a good decision. "I was nervous at first, because they can make you or break you in this business," Brenner said.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF REGIMEN
The difference between group fitness classes on Long Island and in New York? "City exercisers are willing to try practically anything to get them in better shape," says Pam Ruderman, fitness director at Sky Athletic Club in Rockville Centre.
So when Crunch Fitness in Manhattan, say, offers a class called Recess, in which schoolyard activities such as hula hooping and hopscotch are turned into a cardio workout, you can expect a line to form outside - until people get bored with it and start looking for the next big thing.
Long Island is different. At Sky, Ruderman says, "Our most crowded class is still a good, old, low-impact cardio class." Other favorites include yoga, spin and Pilates - all proven.
In the city, classes and even entire facilities are built around fitness celebrities such as Molly Fox, Michael Olajide or Lauren Brenner. Although Brenner's Pure Power Boot Camp in Jericho is doing well, the fact that she's been on "Good Morning America" and the "Today" show doesn't seem quite as important to Long Islanders.
"The things that go well out here are the things that challenge people, and take them out of their comfort zone," says Jill Oppenheimer, a manager at Equinox Fitness in Roslyn.
That said, good instructors will develop a loyal clientele - as has Oceanside's Raquel "Rocky" Feder, whose high-level cross-training classes (with names like Rockbody Core and Ripped and Rocked) draw people wherever she goes. "There are people who follow Rocky all over," Oppenheimer says.
While acknowledging that gym-goers in Nassau-Suffolk like the tried-and-true in their group exercise, personal trainer and veteran class instructor Maria DiCroce wonders why no one has created more classes specific to their interests. "Why don't we have more golf conditioning classes?" she muses. "Would women take a class for better muscle stability for anglers? Maybe we could give a workshop for that on the Nautical Mile in Freeport?"
Fit to a Tee? Ripped and Reel? Hey, they could work.
