I’ve heard friends of mine talking about Orangetheory Fitness, or “OTF” for nearly a year now. They all can’t stop saying how much they absolutely LOVE it! They all look so toned, fit, and have tons of energy. I’ve been interested in trying out a class for a while now, but since I haven’t really worked out since December, I’ve been nervous about trying something new. However, fellow mommy blogger Melissa set up a special blogger event and invited a bunch of us to come and try out a class for ourselves, and I could not say no! The class was held over at the Orangetheory Fitness Coral Springs & Parkland location. I absolutely loved it!

When you walk into OTF, it becomes the “happy place” that I have heard many of my friends talk about. The environment is up beat with music playing during the session and the orange color just adds to the good feeling. It wakes you up and makes you feel excited to jump into the workout. Each session is led by two professional trainers who are there to motivate you and make sure you are doing the exercise correctly. Domenic and Rob were our trainers, and I thought they were both amazing. I absolutely loved their style and have missed this type of motivation during a workout. Back when I was in college, I belonged to a gym with a circuit training area where the trainers would motivate us to push harder and do better. I haven’t found anything like that since then, unless I wanted to pay an arm and a leg for personal training sessions. Not only is OTF way more cost effective than personal trainers, but it’s incredibly more fun!

We started out on the rowing machines and then moved on to weights and resistance training. I really enjoyed the rowing and could have kept that up longer! It was fun! The weights and resistance were definitely a challenge. I haven’t used weights in a long time and I was really feeling it!

The last part was the hardest but I enjoyed it the most — treadmill intervals!

At OTF, you are hooked up to a Polar heart rate monitor (which I’m already familiar with thanks to working out on my own with my Polar watch), and your numbers are displayed on a big screen for the duration of your 60 minute workout. The goal is to work hard to keep your heart rate up and stay in the Orange zone (84% or higher) for about 12-20 minutes per class. This zone is the one that will give you the best burn! Hence, the Orange Theory. Additionally, you will continue to burn calories following your OTF session thanks to a concept known as “Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption” or EPOC.

I burned 469 calories at the session, which I think is pretty awesome! They estimate that a typical person will burn between 600-1000 calories during the workout and burn 200-400 more calories from EPOC over the next 24-36 hours. I didn’t hit 600 this time, probably because I am so out of shape from not working out over the past couple months, and had to take some breaks… I’m sure it will happen at some point though! 😉

OTF is super intense, and that’s an understatement! After the class, I definitely felt like throwing up for a few minutes – LOL. And my muscles ached for DAYS!!! However, it was TOTALLY worth it. The great thing about OTF (aside from the exercise high, of course) is that no two workouts are alike! You’d think that there’s only so much they can do, but the trainers told us that they mix it up and in all of their time teaching at OTF, they’ve never given a duplicate workout.

As I mentioned before, this is an amazing, full-body workout where you receive customized instruction for a fraction of the cost of hiring a personal trainer at a gym. They have some really great monthly plans to choose from and classes nearly every hour of the day starting at 5am! Additionally, once you sign up, you can attend a class anywhere, so you can meet a friend for a workout or keep up your workouts if you’re on vacation.

I loved the experience so much that I signed up. I’ve seen the results that my friends have had, and I’m looking forward to getting back in shape this summer. You can get your first class for free to try out. If you do sign up, don’t forget to mention my name — Karen Ziemkowski!

Thank you so much to Melissa and Orangetheory Coral Springs & Parkland (6230 Coral Ridge Drive, Coral Springs, FL 33076) for hosting this event, and also to GNC at the Lakeview Shopping Center in Coral Springs (1360 Coral Ridge Dr, Coral Springs, FL 33071) for giving us fantastic swag bags with all kinds of awesome fitness/health related goodies! #BeatAverage! Click here to find an Orangetheory near you so that you can sign up too!

Make sure you check out OTF Coral Springs & Parkland’s Social Media as well. They are on instagram as @orangetheoryfitness_parkland and you can “like” their Facebook page too: https://www.facebook.com/OTFCoralSprings

Here’s a picture of one of our trainers, Domenic, with some of the awesome bloggers in our group: