Review - Dynamic Conditioning Centre

A first attempt at a vlog (Am I getting lazy? It's just so much easier!) with pjs on and no makeup but the video was to big to upload. You all missed out, is all I'll say.

Review of Dynamic Conditioning Centre in Toronto at Isabella and Yonge:

-What it is: The environment is like a large playground that includes monkey bars, field turf,  rock climbing grips, cargo netting, large tires, sledghammers, fireman hoses, kegs and climbing ropes. DCC focuses on functional movement training based on the principle that strength and conditioning should be rooted in primal movement patterns: squatting, lunging, pushing, pulling and throwing.

-The pros: The staff/teachers/coaches are very creative in making full use of the facility - I took a bootcamp class that focused mostly on utilizing your own body weight and plyos and a core class that had over 1,000 reps of everything BUT crunches. The staff also made an effort to make me feel welcome/at ease when I got there - while I didn't particularly need this, a beginner who is nervous in this setting would really benefit from this.

Also, it's fun. If you're plateau-ing or stuck in a pattern in your training (especially with H.I.I.T - high intensity interval training and your strength training), this will shock your muscles, your body, and you'll be able to lose that last 5-10 lbs or re-boost your creativity for your strength training. Even though I'm marathon training and strentgh training and doing more yoga, I was sore for 3 consecutive days post DCC.

-Guaranteed, in comparison to a conventional gym, you'd see faster results. Like a P-90X playground of creativity for muscle confusion.

-The cons: Even though they claim that there's a 50-50 ratio of men and women that use the gym, and even though I'm pretty hardcore myself and don't get intimidated in these kinds of settings, the reality is that it was pretty testosterone-y. So while that's okay every now and then for a kick-ass, set-you-straight workout, I don't see it replacing my gym membership where I can have more control over what I might want to do that day.

There wasn't a lot of focus (if at all in the first class I took) on form and alignment. I did my best to slow down my movements to ensure proper form but still left there with two muscle twinges (that haven't turned into injuries, knock on wood) that made me really uncomfortable. So listen to your body and common sense if you're seeing a movement that's too fast or not focusing on tightening the core going into it.

There doesn't seem to be a class pass option for using the facility and taking classes, which is how I'd tend to utilize this kind of facility (drop-in, interspersed with other workouts). Instead, it looks to be membership based exclusively.

http://www.dccentres.ca/