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My Koko Fitclub Experience

When it comes to Five Towns fit­ness, I’ve tried it all!

I was a mem­ber at some point of Club Cen­tral, New York Sports­club and Life Fit­ness where I had to moti­vate myself 3–4 times a week to hit the tread­mill and take classes. Often I found after a month or two bore­dom set in and my moti­va­tion drop. The classes, some were great, oth­ers made me feel like a num­ber and always less fit, less flex­i­ble, less in shape than every­one else. But the monthly fee was low and it was bet­ter than nothing.

One year I was lucky enough to join PTI, a per­sonal train­ing cen­ter where for a high monthly fee you get 3 30 minute one-on-one ses­sions. I jus­ti­fied the extra cost by quit­ting my reg­u­lar gym and telling my hus­band all this work­ing out will keep me from lunch­ing and spend­ing in other areas. I loved that I had no choice but to show up those 3 days a week, or else I had a trainer wait­ing and mad. And you didn’t want to mess with some of these trainers.

Then I dis­cov­ered War­ren Levi Karate. I heard their boot­camp classes were insane and since they needed a web­site, and PTI was clos­ing, I worked out a deal and gave War­ren a shot. This move even­tu­ally turned into a 3 year (and count­ing) addic­tion that has changed my body and my life. The inti­mate small classes that marry car­dio and strength in cre­ative and enter­tain­ing ways has kept my Fit­ness ADD in line. You get to know your Sen­sei  and he gets to know you. It’s the best of both worlds for me since not show­ing up feels like not show­ing up to a per­sonal train­ing ses­sion. When my hus­band started doing Insan­ity at home, a pop­u­lar intense fit­ness video, I told him that Boot­camp is exactly like Insan­ity.  The only draw­back is the lack of car­dio equip­ment for the days I don’t do classes, and of course it’s not cheap. (How­ever I heard that they plan on get­ting car­dio equip­ment  in their new loca­tion, a move I think is brilliant.)

So when Koko Fit­club, a new local fit­ness cen­ter that claims they have new tech­ni­cal twist on fit­ness, offered to hook me up with a 3 months trial, I decided to try it out. (In con­junc­tion of course with War­ren Levi) I was curi­ous about what makes this dif­fer­ent than a reg­u­lar gym and can it really take the place of a per­sonal trainer since they have some­thing called “smart train­ing”  which elim­i­nates train­ers but still gives you a personalized experience.

My first impres­sion the day I signed up was how mod­ern and pretty the place was. I loved the bam­boo decor and the col­ors (orange and brown) felt very nat­ural. The place isn’t so big, but since each machine does dozens of exer­cises  it doesn’t have to be. I got my wel­come pack­age which included a water bot­tle, t-shirt, set of head­phones and Koko Key in a bright orange Koko bag.

The Koko key is lit­er­ally the key every­thing here. You use it to enter the facil­ity when they are closed, a con­cept I found extremely appeal­ing. I can go work­out at 3am, or mid­night if I please, with this key! In fact my very first ses­sion I arrived at 7:30am, before open­ing. I loved wav­ing that key and unlock­ing the door. It felt like my own pri­vate club.

The key is used for the FitCheck machine, the strength machines and the car­dio. It auto­mat­i­cally tracks and reports your progress and per­for­mance dur­ing and after each ses­sion, plus it con­trols the strength train­ing  pro­grams you are on. (Flash­back of my New York Sports­club days, try­ing to scrib­ble the weight amount and how many reps I did myself, always los­ing moti­va­tion after 2–3 weeks.) So after telling them my goals they down­loaded the right pro­gram for me onto my key and I was ready to go.

The first thing I did was remove my shoes and go on the Fitc­Check machine. It does not weigh you…at least not in the tra­di­tional sense. Koko is very anti being focused on your weight. Instead it mea­sures your EBMI which is your Enhanced Body Mass mea­sure­ment. (Which means it cal­cu­lates and tracks your body’s lean mus­cle level.) So it gives you a num­ber and if your goal is to lose weight, you want to get that EBMI num­ber down and your mus­cle weight up.

I started my first ses­sion with the strength machine.
I plugged in my key and it down­loaded my pro­gram. There’s a piv­ot­ing screen that walks you through each exer­cise. It tells you how much weight you need and will beep if you mis­tak­ingly choose the wrong weight. It has an image that shows your move­ment and the goal is to stay within a cer­tain point and it grades you based on how well you did. It even gives you koko points at the end of each ses­sion, a very good moti­va­tor for some­one like me. Over­all my ses­sion was much less intense than what I’m used to at boot­camp, but nev­er­the­less, it was enjoy­able, inter­est­ing and easy to fol­low. It wasn’t exactly like hav­ing a human per­sonal trainer but it was a close sec­ond, plus I didn’t have to make bor­ing small talk.

I then tried the car­dio por­tion which did not impress me. For such an advanced fit­ness pro­gram, the car­dio part is lack­ing. After you plug in your key it gives you instruc­tions to plug in your head­phones to an ipod that is Velcro’d onto the machine and you have to man­u­ally pick a pro­gram and lis­ten to a voice give you instruc­tions on what to do on your tread­mill or ellip­ti­cal. There’s no music, only a voice that tells you when to go faster and higher and gives you tips in between. I found myself day­dream­ing and then miss­ing his instruc­tions. Mean­while the screen, wich has such potential…only shows exactly what the machine shows, how fast you are going and the time. After my first ses­sion I opted to use the car­dio machines the tra­di­tional way, listening to music on my iphone and doing my own pro­gram. I’m still get­ting a great work­out. I com­plained about this and was told Koko is very soon unrolling a car­dio pro­gram equiv­a­lent to their fan­tas­tic strength pro­gram, uti­liz­ing that screen and allow­ing you to lis­ten to music. I’m glad to hear that!

As of today I have been doing Koko in con­junc­tion with War­ren Levi for 3 weeks.  I love the per­son­al­ized web­site I got that tracks my progress. My EBMI has actu­ally gone down 1 point too! And the strength ses­sions are get­ting more and more intense so much so that I actu­ally feel sore. I’m lov­ing the fact that I can come in at all hours. I’m lov­ing how quiet it is there though as it gets more mem­bers that can change. I’m not impressed with the car­dio por­tion, but I’m thrilled to have access to a tread­mill since with War­ren Levi I cur­rently don’t.  So far I think it’s the sec­ond best thing to get­ting a per­sonal trainer and for under $100 a month, way way more afford­able. For some­one who loses moti­va­tion eas­ily, who loves keep­ing track of progress and see­ing results writ­ten out and who needs to have each exer­cise walked through, it’s a great solution.

I for­got to men­tion the Koko­fuel part which is another cool ser­vice they just unrolled. Based on your pro­gram they cre­ate a cus­tomized meal plan to prop­erly FUEL your body with proper nutri­tion. I printed out my plan and it looked doable and actu­ally deli­cious, except I’m not in the mood right now to fol­low a meal plan. But I think it’s a great fea­ture and saves you on nutri­tion­ist bills if you were the type to go to one.

So I have 2 more months to go and I’m really curi­ous if my moti­va­tion remains, if my EBMI goes down fur­ther, if I get stronger, if this works for me. Will keep you posted as I progress!

Check out their Face­book page here.

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