Photo by Tyler Nelson
Amy Rebholz and Dylan Dreger of The Exercise Coach in Shorewood.
Finding time for improving your health is tough. The science is all there saying the more active you are, the better. For most people, working out isn’t fun. Not even close. The Exercise Coach in Shorewood (3565 N. Oakland Ave.) promises results in just two 20-minute sessions per week. That’s shorter than an episode of your favorite TV show. Full disclosure: I was very skeptical going into this.
Studio Owner and Certified Exercise Coach, Dylan Dreger, agreed to run me through a session. I hadn’t exercised at a gym in a long time and it had always been a chore. Like many amateurs, I had no idea where to start. To get an effective exercise, I had to pay a personal trainer to tell me what to do. Pair that $50-60/hour with the monthly membership to the gym and that’s a significant chunk of change. Eventually I stopped training and paying for a membership. Gyms can be intimidating for non-competitive inside-kids like me, so the small, semi-private space of this gym really appealed to me.
Dreger became interested in training after suffering a back injury while playing baseball. He was in grad school for exercise science at Concordia University when he discovered the Appleton location of The Exercise Coach. He got a job training there and eventually wanted a location of his own. That dream became a reality on February 27.
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“I lost more weight with these short exercises than I did from hours of baseball practice almost every day,” says Dreger. It was hard for him to find time in his busy schedule and even he was surprised by the results and thinks more people will find the benefits if they give it a shot.
Photo by Tyler Nelson
A couple of the proprietary machines that use Exerbotics technology.
The Exercise Coach aims to help people lose weight, gain strength and get healthy. How they manage that has to do with the technology inside their proprietary machines. Exerbotics was a research and development company working on robotic strength training machines when they began their partnership with The Exercise Coach in 2009. In 2014, Exerbotics was acquired by The Exercise Coach and the franchise has been growing since.
Getting setup on the machines is pretty easy with the trainers there, like Amy Rebholz, another Certified Exercise Coach at the facility. They measure where you need to be seated and how far to extend in order to keep you in your safe and comfortable range of motion. To calibrate the machines further, users are instructed to first give roughly 50% effort, followed by a reset, then 100% of what they can give. The computer uses those figures as guides for how much resistance to apply throughout the multiple levels and series of exercises you can go through. Results are tracked and logged for future sessions.
The workouts are designed to deliver brief, intense resistance strength exercises that fully stimulate entire muscle groups. Tesla automobiles came to my mind while I was using the machines. The electric motors make exercise more efficient and effective at the same time. Just like trading in a bulky gas-guzzling SUV for an electric car; they serve the same purpose but the technology makes for a much more efficient journey.
After finishing my 20-minute session, I was glad I packed an extra shirt. I was winded and it took about an hour for my legs to feel normal again and stop shaking.
