REGINA -- Fitness seekers in Regina are taking advantage of two unique opportunities in the city.
Warrior Flow Fitness has been in Regina for two and a half years, offering a gym session best compared to a kettle bell workout combined with yoga. Participants use a mace to perform both tight and free flowing movements.
"If you ever need to twist and turn your body or put your hands above your head, the mace will be for you,” Warrior Flow Fitness Owner Zack Yanyk said. "The offset weight in and of itself makes it a fair bit different from using a barbell or a dumbbell or even a kettlebell,"
It's a practice that's been used for thousands of years, but in Regina it's still growing. The practice was originally designed for wrestlers learning to throw their opponents.
"With the mace, you need that balance of yin and yang. So I need to be able to be loose in some positions but then immediately be able to reengage retighten the groups that I’m working on," Yanyk said.
Yanyk believes humans have a genetic memory to the first tools used by mankind he feels the mace reminds them of that.
“In our very DNA is the love for that tool, and I think that gets brought out when you have a mace in your hand,” Yanyk said.
If swinging tools isn't your thing, and you're more into a workout with dance influences, Oxygen Yoga & Fitness is offering a hot barre class, challenging participants to do the movements of a barre class in a hot room.
“By no means do you have to have a dance background to take the class, but it just incorporates some movements that target those smaller muscle groups that we don't necessarily hit in the other fitness classes,” Oxygen Yoga & Fitness Instructor Aiden Thompson said.
In Oxygen's barre classes, the workout is done in a room warmed by infrared panels.
Aimed at combining the benefits of working out, with the heat from the panels.
"The uniqueness with the infrared is that it heats from the inside out. And it has a whole list of benefits ranging from skin purification. It can help with weight loss,” Thompson said.
