Poles, circus and bodybuilding: Alt workouts take Las Vegas by storm

When you hear someone say they’re gonna work out, you probably imagine weights or a treadmill. In Las Vegas, that’s less and less the truth.

Yes, people still heft barbells and spend hours on treadmills. But there’s such a demand for gyms by so many different walks of life, gyms have changed. They now specialize in order to draw out those who won’t do that traditional gym stuff.

We’re talking yoga, Pilates, trapeze swinging, tightropes, pole dancing. Then there’s working out in extreme heat or bike-specific gyms; cross training, MMA workouts, boxing— it just goes on and on.

And behind all this seems to be a growing need for people to stay in shape. It wasn’t always that way. In 2017, U.S. News and World Reports ranked Nevada ranked 30th in the country for health. Today, one out of every five people has a gym membership — the highest in history. That’s about 66 million Americans.

Write and pole dance instructor Jen Avison Smith recently wrote a piece for Desert Companion called “Just Whoo It.” The piece explores alternative exercise classes around the valley. She joins State of Nevada host Joe Schoenmann along with Michelle Hunt, the co-founder of Las Vegas Circus Center; Randy Harris, host of the AT Corner podcast; and David Ziegler, a bodybuilding coach.

Pole fitness

Davidson Smith said she got into pole fitness with an in-home set up, “making the biggest fool of myself,” but eventually learned the moves and realized it was a great workout. She was eventually certified in Las Vegas and has taught pole fitness all over the world.

It’s a full body workout. “There are so many varieties and styles to pole dancing, whether it's something that you'll see maybe in a more traditional club setting, which we have a lot of here. Or maybe it's something that has a little bit more physicality, like just doing pure tricks, pure strength, different methods of just executing these combinations of moves.”

And it’s not just for women. Half of her instructors are men. Since it’s a creative structure, she said there’s more room to be messy, to explore.

“You can use different songs and you can create different choreography. It's almost like painting, you can take so many different combinations of things and put your own style on them,” she said.

Last year, there was a survey by Women's Running Magazine that found only 24% of women in the United States felt comfortable in a traditional gym. About 76% felt uncomfortable when exercising in public spaces.

“The nice thing about being in an alternative setting, especially if … you're not a competitor, or you're not a performer, and you do it just for fun or for recreational like fitness, there are people that are in the exact same boat as you and … they're going to mess up the same way, they're going to have the same triumphs, so you can celebrate them together,” Davidson Smith said.

Bodybuilding

Ziegler is a well-known Las Vegas bodybuilder, with a million followers on TikTok and 100,000 on Instagram. He also uses traditional gyms, where many may feel intimidated.

“I don't want to intimidate anybody, I don't want anyone to think I'm judging them for any reason whether it's the workout or their clothes,” he said. “If you approach me, I'll be incredibly nice to you. I would love to talk to you. I'm very happy to have you there. But if I'm in there at the same time you're there, the last thing I want to do is to give you any reason to feel like you shouldn't be in there.”

Before he lifts weights, Ziegler said he makes sure his body is “tremendously” ready. That doesn’t mean stretching to touch his toes, but he said it might be him swinging his arms in a natural way to get blood flowing.

“Everything I want to do is my body's normal natural movements. And I'm just going to try to make sure that they can all do them comfortably and happily before I ask them to put external stress on there,” he said.

He sees it as a sport, but can see it as art. It can also have pageant elements in competition:

“We put a tremendous amount of effort into the physical appearance beyond just the muscles, I'm talking about makeup, making sure the skin is tanned, it looks nice. Even the fingernails are a showcase of what we've been working on. … The show, the competition itself, is a snapshot of what the last year has been. And that year is me waking up at 4 a.m. for 90 minutes of cardio, getting my meals, and for two hours waiting to go to the gym, at the gym for two hours, half an hour of cardio, back to sleep. So I can do it again the next day, day after day after day after day.”

Circus

Hunt said safety is their top priority at the Las Vegas Circus Center. For beginners, you can start with aerial silks, recreational flying trapeze, trampoline and contortion.

“We have a great class that meets on Saturdays,” she explained. “It's called our circus experience class, which is kind of an introduction if you're not sure where to start. It's for all levels. We have kids that take that all the way up to adults that take it, as well. And it's kind of an intro there. It's a 90-minute program. There's three mini classes which kind of introduces them to things that we offer with our most popular classes. So usually we have an aerial class, a trampoline class, and a little mini introduction to our flying trapeze program.”

She said it’s a great place to start if you’re even more intimidated by the circus arts.

“It's got a very warm, family-friendly, inviting atmosphere to it. But you're also training right next to professional performers … we're trying to get beginners to come out and be inspired by what they see, where they can go.”

They have a wide range of people who use the center, including someone “just here for some fitness” and those who are “8 years old and just saw a Cirque du Soleil show.” One of their regulars is a man in his 70s who does flying trapeze three to four days a week.

Athletic training

As an athletic trainer, Harris helps people recover from fitness injuries. The most common injury is overuse, such as jumper’s knee, shin splints and plantar fasciitis.

So, no pain, no gain?

“I get the message that's supposed to be the idea behind ‘no pain, no gain,’ but essentially, pain … it's a good signal for your body letting you know, ‘Hey, something's wrong, this is a problem, you need to stop.’ So really, what you should be striving for is … a challenge to the body,” he said.

Static stretching isn’t really supported anymore ahead of a workout, he said, but you should still get in a warm up.

“A dynamic stretching is something that's more active. I think that you're going to use movement to get to your … range and motions are great. And then a static stretching after your exercise or activity is perfect.”

If you’re trying to lose weight, what’s the best way to get started?

Harris said looking at caloric intake and diet is very important, but exercise goes hand-in-hand. He said it’s also important to start small: Runners don’t start off with the marathon, so he said to start even just walking each day.

“You're actually starting to see it a lot more now in physicians where exercise is medicine. You know that over the past decade, a lot of physicians are really trying to switch towards, instead of prescribing stuff, you see ‘do this’ in pain, as well. That exercise is very beneficial in pain control and in weight management.”

What about working out at home?

If you don’t have equipment, Harris suggested these workouts: planks (side plants, regular form plants, straight arm planks), bodyweight squats, split squats, lunges.

“Those are great without weights and you don't even need to buy fancy weights like a gallon of water, a gallon of milk has a weight to it.”

What some of our listeners said

Dan from Las Vegas

I'm 72 and I do 12 dance classes a week. And it ranges from more hip hop classes to a traditional dance class to tap class … It's all very good for me because, well, after two hip surgeries and working on the Strip for many years, I'm still at it. So I started dancing when I was a little boy. And I just feel great, you know, because I'll also, four times a year, do a 60-mile bike trip from my downtown home, up to Red Rock and down to Blue Diamond and back. And it feels great because I'm in my own atmosphere. It's just been a lot of fun, because it's also a learning thing. So that when you work your body, especially in a dance class, you're working your musical abilities, to be able to count music, and to pick up the choreography so that you can just blast it out.

Lawrence from Summerlin

I began my study of fitness in 1954. And I've been training ever since I was one of the original genres of Los Angeles. … I teach martial arts. I work with anger management people. … If you're going to be a middle linebacker, you're going to train one way. Right now you're going to start noticing that Tai Chi will be a big, big interest for football players who want to learn how to touch and go instead of hammering each other.

Frank from Las Vegas

One of the things I've done for the last couple of years, I was an assistant UNLV boxing coach for over 10 years. … I was asked by former principal at Green Valley, Jeff Hahn, to come out to the Mission School and help the kids with boxing. As soon as I stepped on the campus and let the principal know that you really don't want boxing here, but what you want is a fitness program, which they didn't have, they were doing it online, so that's not realistic. Mission School is a school for kids that are suffering from addictions and they come there voluntarily because they want to improve their lives. So we were able to put a fitness program together for them and build a fitness room.

Guests: Michelle Hunt, co-founder, Las Vegas Circus Center; Randy Harris, host, AT Corner podcast; David Ziegler, bodybuilding coach, Ziegler Monster Fitness; Jen Avison Smith, writer, pole dancer