Meltdown Fitness

Fantastic experience: I've been going for about a month and I love, love, love Meltdown!! So first of all: If you've driven by, be aware that it's bigger than it looks from the outside. There's a big room for Zumba, Insanity, hip hop, Turbo Kick, spin, etc.; and then there is a smaller room with heavy bags for kickboxing as well as free weights and bands; and a third room for barre, Pilates, and yoga. The Natural Movement class typically meets at the gym and then heads outside if the weather is nice. Still, it's not a huge, mall-sized facility. It's just one floor and there's no locker/shower room or cafe or childcare. Honestly, though, that smallness is what I love about it. Meltdown is a community as well as a gym. Yes, there's a wide variety of classes, with skilled, fun, funny, smart, encouraging instructors who are amazing at challenging clients to work hard while having fun. There's a wide variety of ages/sizes/shapes/fitness levels among the clients, too, which I appreciate as a beginner! But the really neat thing about Meltdown is that if you go even semi-regularly, people will know you and will be rooting for you to achieve the fitness goals that are important to you. (For example, I told one of the instructors that I'd be interested in maybe working up to do Conquer the Gauntlet in a year. She was completely encouraging and immediately had ideas about maybe getting a Meltdown team together.) And really, that community aspect winds up unofficially providing a lot of what a bigger facility would provide. There may not be childcare, but I've seen people bring their older kids. Everyone's glad to see them, and they're happy enough reading or doing homework, and it's a positive enough environment that parents don't need to fret. There's not a smoothie bar, but people have brought snacks to share. There's not a bulletin board with member birthdays because people are friends on Facebook and know about each other's birthdays. That said, even though it's a community, it's not shamey or insular. I've never heard anyone talk trash about anyone else's body. There's not an insider's lingo that takes a month to learn. You don't have to eat paleo/eat raw/run marathons/bench press 300 pounds/etc. in order to fit in. Nobody's declaring war on their thighs or yelling at you to keep going unless you faint, puke or die. There's not a leader that everyone reveres, and you aren't pressured to spend hours every day there. It's just a really nice place for normal people with school and/or jobs and/or families, who want to challenge themselves to do things with their bodies they couldn't do before... all while having a lot of fun with a great group of folks.