Facebook and Twitter have been buzzing about Precision Fitness. Then one day, my friend Arlene, now a Precision Fitness buff, had the bright idea that I should try it out. And after procrastinating for a while, on Monday I decided to buckle down and do it. I met with trainer and creator Joel Pile, who is so much more intense than he looks. Arlene failed to warn me about his militant-type routines and I was thrown into the fire, at the picturesque Hollows, Queen's Park Savannah, from the minute I arrived. "Okay, Cherisse, join the line," said Pile, who wasted no time in getting the session started. To warm up, Pile, 28, instructed his clients-nine women-to jog three metres and do knee lifts on the spot for about seven minutes. With my heart rate up and the sun beating down on me, the real work began. Precision Fitness is a potent fusion of various high-intensity challenges aimed at providing a complete body workout. Pile turned a deaf ear to my request to go easy on me as he instructed the group to do 40-metre sprints, followed by 30-metre lunges back and forth, and then more sprints. He placed cones at various points to illustrate how far we needed to go. We did three sets of this routine and I felt as though my body was being pushed to the limit.
The forward squat jumps were next and they were very challenging. This exercise works the lower body including the legs, thighs, calves and gluteus maximus, as well as the core. I didn't want to complain...but I did ask for a two-minute break shortly after completing the first set. "Two minutes?" asked David Warner, Pile's assistant. "I will give you two seconds." His boyish good looks belied his sternness. I soon found out he was even stricter than Pile."Okay, it's over," he said, with a whole second to spare. I reluctantly got back into the game. Warner, who's been a part of Pile's five-month-old fitness programme for the last three months, led me and the other women into more knee lifts and bunny hops. A bunny hop is exactly what its name suggests, and somehow I remember it being much easier to master when I was in primary school. Those days are long gone, because for me, it was the hardest part of the routine. "Come on. Go lower. Like this," Pile stated, as he showed me how to do a good bunny hop. At least I tried. The workout wasn't over yet.Pile, a former national sprinter, who started running at nine, explains that he uses plyometric training (exercise involving repeated rapid stretching and contracting of muscles to increase muscle power) for each of his workouts.
This type of training has long been a staple of athletes who want to improve their strength. Pile says he incorporates basic plyometric-type moves, such as the bunny hop, into each workout to add more intensity and challenge. It also helps one burn calories and increases power in the lower body. Then it was on to strengthening the core muscles with two sets of 20 sit-ups and side crunches. Pile coupled us off and with Warner chipping in to make the group even, each person took turns doing the abdominal exercises and assisting his/her partner by holding down his/her feet and legs. My partner Candice was fun and with perspiration dripping down our faces, we encouraged each other to keep it moving when the going got tough. After what felt like an eternity, which in reality was an hour, Pile's Precision Fitness class came to an end.In an interview after the workout, Pile, who has a clientele of 42 fitness enthusiasts, mostly women, explained that because it was a beginner's class, he didn't use any weights. "Everybody works with their own body weights. It helps get them conditioned and their fitness levels up," he said. After about a month of training, Pile piles it on. "They then move to the next level. I incorporate a lot of hill work, so we will go to the very top of Chancellor Hill and work out...It's like a team, people push each other and help each other, and that's what you need in fitness." While I'm still baffled at the "beginner's class" part, Precision Fitness is definitely worth trying out. And unlike Arlene, I'm warning you beforehand: be prepared to get sweaty and get fit.