By Tom Gresham
For many, the cold, gray winter is best spent at home. Motivation is elusive and the warm couch can seem like the most hospitable place to be. However, there is no shortage of facilities in the Richmond area that allow visitors to remain active – to pretend fall skipped winter and went straight to spring.
Wendy Greene, marketing director at ACAC Fitness and Welln ess Center, said ACAC often hears from members who say they need to hit the gym right after work in the winter or they will never make it there at all. Once they arrive
home – out of the dark and the cold, into their cozy, heated homes – they tend “to want to snuggle in for the night,” says Greene. “That’s the real difference
we see,” continues Greene, “You’ve got to make exercise a priority in the winter and not let yourself get sidetracked, because it’s so easy to let that happen.” Winter can be particularly difficult for those who predominantly exercise outdoors in the warm months. Too often winter becomes an excuse to let fitness gains languish.
One alternative is to look at winter as an opportunity for reinvention. According
to Greene, winter inspires many of their members who prefer outdoor
pursuits to seek shelter in the ACAC facilities and to focus on exercises that they do less frequently the rest of the year. Winter can be an opportunity to work on fitness areas that have been overlooked or to experiment with completely new exercises that might push one in new directions.
One possible new sport for winter: rock-climbing. Peak Experiences, an indoor
rock-climbing facility, encourages beginners, as well as advanced climbers.
Julie Appleby, a staff member at Peak Experiences, said winter is busy because “a lot of outdoor climbers are chased in from outside.” Appleby said indoor rock-climbing is adventurous and fun.
Peak Experiences accommodates a wide range of skill and experience levels – from seasoned climbers who have scaled perilous faces outdoors to complete neophytes who are learning the basics. Introductory classes for children and adults are available.
 “You can climb at your own pace here,” Appleby said. “And you don’t have to get to the top. There are a lot of different styles and speeds of climbing that work here.”
Peak Experiences is family-friendly and offers a number of classes for children. Kids as young as eight-years-old can participate in a youth climbing program called “Cliffhangers”
and children even younger have enjoyed being belayed by the Peak Experiences
staff. Appleby said rock-climbing provides exceptional fitness benefits because
participants are lifting their own body weight. She said the activity burns more calories than basketball, among other activities. Even indoors, she said, there’s also a reigning sense of adventure.
Rock-climbers at Peak Experiences often arrive with partners, and group exercises can be especially worthwhile to pursue in the winter. The accompanying social interaction
serves as that extra impetus to get out and get active, and it also helps to expand one’s horizons a bit. Group exercise classes at area recreation facilities, such as ACAC and American Family Fitness, offer numerous
options to find kinship in exercise.
There are plenty of indoor activities that do not fit the fitness category, of course. G-Force Karts has proven to be one especially popular winter-weather option for locals. Nicole O’Donnell, regional sales manager for G-Force Karts, said winter is the facility’s
busiest season. Go-kart racing is the headliner, but there is also a large inflatable room that occupies children two-years-old and up and a 6,300 square-foot laser tag arena that is the only jungle-themed laser tag arena in the state. The go-karts sit two inches off the ground and reach 40 miles per hour, and new customers invariably get a “perma-grin” the first time they take a lap around the track, O’Donnell said. “These are racing karts and people don’t realize how fast they go until they get in them.” O’Donnell said G-Force Karts has more than 50,000 members at its Richmond location
and hundreds of Virginia businesses host events at the track each year. She said
people love the competitive aspect of racing,
measuring their speeds against friends and family – and themselves.
Links:
www.gforcekarts.com
www.peakexperiences.com
www.richmond.acac.com
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