SHAPE Fitness released their “what expect to see” this year, and the BOARD30 workout touches on them all.

MOBILITY TRAINING is a workout that improves your ability to move your muscles and joints through various movements safely. With BOARD30, in our classic 30-minute class, you touch upon every muscle through a wide range of exercises, think squats, lunges, wing arm movements, overhead punches, quadruped crunches, and glute lifts. Each movement is attached to one, two, three, or four resistance bands asking your body to move not in isolation but as a whole unit. As a result, it not only asks all your muscles to work but also helps with joint integrity and balance.

POSTURE WORKOUTS train the muscles to support the spine and lumbopelvic hip complex. BOARD30 has a core element, unlike other workouts. You can access your back and hip muscles more successfully with a strong core. We tell our clients to start slow; holding the posture while working through the entire movement is more important than trying to work with more resistance. Picture lying on your belly, resistance bands attached to your feet, and lifting your legs and chest off the board, arms stretched in front. Posture Extraordinaire!

PRIMAL MOVEMENT sounds fantastic! Boiled down means real-life movements, such as bending down and retrieving dropped items or getting on your hands and knees to grab the stuffed toy under the couch. But how about crouching, rolling onto your back, and rolling back to the crouch position? Think tigers with an itch. This is not a fad, but a back-to-basics fitness approach, and BOARD30 uses squats, bear crawls, deadlifts, and lunges, all with bands to build strength faster and safer. Using weights in isolation can help target specific muscles, but for primal movement, you want all muscles engaged as you crouch walk, and bands ask more from all your muscles in the exercise.

STANDING ABS WORKOUT is a natural for BOARD30. Unsurprisingly, engaging the ab muscles in an upright posture offers a different benefit than traditional crunches and sit-ups. It also helps improve posture. BOARD30 offers a standing resistance band class that works the entire body but has a core focus. You work all movements through the core as you lift the bands overhead, in a lateral movement, or punching down. There is no way to escape the use of your core muscles, and you are guided by a BOARD30 trainer who prompts you throughout the whole session to hold the proper posture. Think standing with a resistance band attached to your ankle, now crunch the knee up and slowly kick the foot forward, return slowly, fighting the resistance. 

EXERCISE AS A MENTAL HEALTH TOOL, well, YEA!! We all know this, but we don’t all access the power of improved mental health through training. Exercise is a stress reliever that enhances sleep and brain health and boosts energy. Every client leaving BOARD30 after class has a huge smile; they feel oxygenated, have a supportive community, and keep coming back. Once you experience improved mental health, it is hard to drop your practice. BOARD30 is a training system accessed by all ages and fitness levels. In class, you can have an eighty-year-old with a modified exercise working on quad strength to improve their balance and ability to squat. That eighty-year-old is supported by all the participants and goes home sweaty, accomplished, and more vital. The young athlete training for a marathon takes the most challenging version of the movement and pushes, sweaty, stronger, and happy. Wherever you are on your fitness journey, exercise, simply put, makes you feel better. 

VIRTUAL REALITY is a thing. BOARD30 does not have a fancy VR headset, but we have a home version workout, the BOARD30 Mini, with an app filled with classes to keep you moving. You can easily take the Mini Board with you on travel, to the office, or to a park to meet friends. It is the same 30-minute workout with resistance bands, some HIIT, lots of cardio, strength training focused, or Pilates style. The app has something for everyone. Do your workout when and where you want, which helps you maintain your practice—also, not a hefty price tag compared to VR headsets.