taryn toomey’s impossibly hard workout: the class
Taryn Toomey, above, has crafted a workout will leave you smiling…eventually
Thirty minutes into The Class my left butt cheek feels like it’s in a perma-spasm, every inch of my core is begging me to quit and I’m cursing the friend who brought me here, along with the teacher and everybody else in the room for keeping up and proving it can be done. But this, I will later discover, is a pretty standard reaction.
Launched officially in September last year, Taryn Toomey’s impossibly hard workout, known simply as The Class, has become the latest cult sweat obsession in NYC, drawing hundreds to a small studio in TriBeCa every week. Already the waiting list goes on for days and local resident Naomi Watts is a regular.
Described by Toomey as “a morph of yoga-based breath and meditation, all the grounding parts of yoga, coupled with a sculpting, bootcamp style class,” her method is very much in the zeitgeist. Classes like Pure Yoga’s PXT, Bootcamp 216 and Circuit of Change are all tapping into the notion of a more ‘conscious’ cardio or conditioning workout.
Was she expecting it to become so popular? “It’s been a strange, out of body experience,” she tells me. “Every day when I step up in front of the room, I’m like ‘What? People really came for this?’”
Sound-tracked to a motivational mix of chart hits and classics (“it takes about two hours to program a session because the music is so key”), the basic premise it that you work one muscle group for the length of an entire song. Cue a rapid descent into what Toomey calls The Pain Room, “which is when I cue the breath,” she explains. “When you feel the intensity, that is the reminder to breathe….”
In class this sounds like her husky voice screaming over the music; “INHAAAAAAAALE….EXHAAAAAAAALE!” She laughs; “I bring it through in my voice because I feel like this helps produce a surge of endorphins. You can use climaxes in the music as a sound release too—the same as letting out a ‘GRRRR!’”
Other vocal cues include; “That’s just the change you’re feeling!” (when you’re feeling like your leg is about to drop off), or “Soften your face, soften your tongue because this action tells your body you’re okay.” She admits, “I tell people a lot ‘you’re fine.’”
It all makes Toomey sound like your typical type-A New Yorker, which is only partly the case. Hailing from New Jersey by way of Connecticut, she relocated to Manhattan 12 years ago. Having always loved fitness, she taught Step Aerobics in Florida (at just 18), she worked for Ralph Lauren and then Dior before going back to her roots and completing her yoga teacher training.
The Class was born shortly after she became a mother for the first time, teaching to a small group of friends in her building’s gym. “It was about getting back in shape and creating a sense of community, as well as a way to get right into the core of the body and shake it out, listen to good music and just feel alive.”
But why make it so darn hard? “Well the obvious thing is that then the change happens much faster,” she says. “But I also wanted to create a space in people’s body where you meet the ‘no way’ or the panic button goes off, and you can choose to just observe the response. That way, when something outside class smacks you in the emotional face, you can look at it and work around it, as opposed to going right back into the same groove you’ve been stuck in for 35 years.”
It’s a skill that Toomey herself had to develop from a young age. Describing difficulties in her early life, she says that “even as a little girl, I would tell myself; ‘this is not forever, I am going to have my own life one day’.” And the determination and inner strength displayed in this one sentence helps everything fall into place.
Back in TriBeCa, we’re about two minutes into a set of lung-and-quad-bashing squat jumps, but then we soften our faces, soften our tongues and embrace it. And guess what? We are fine.
Whether it’s interviewing Lady Gaga, unveiling the latest trends in fashion, or getting under the skin of our most neurotic social trends, Ruby Warrington is at the forefront of it all. She’s a British lifestyle writer, the celebrated creator of the blog The Numinous, and a regular contributor to the lululemon blog.
