Extreme exercise trend an extreme sports spinoff

By Tim Friend
USA Today

For some, extreme fitness training is about preparing for a big event, such as mountain climbing. Advertiser library photo • 1996

Ten minutes later, instructor Sean Burch, 32, bounds a bit too energetically into the room, hands clapping, red ponytail bobbing and cranks up Led Zeppelin on the stereo system. "Jumping jacks!" he orders. The class obeys. Five minutes later Burch shouts: "Grab a rope! Let's go!"

They jump to the beat of the music, increasing in the next 15 minutes to a demonic pace. Ropes blur as the music transitions to Marilyn Manson. First a driving drum beat; then hissing lyrics, " 'The beautiful people. The beautiful people ...' " It's still only 5:50 a.m.

The American Heart Association seems to think that exercise is 20 minutes on a treadmill three times a week. Burch calls the past 20 minutes a warm-up, and no one has broken a sweat. A newcomer gets a bad feeling.

"This is not your mama's aerobics class," Burch says. At 6 feet 4, 180 pounds, he has 2.7 percent body fat and consumes 5,000 calories a day.

For the next hour and 15 minutes, Burch motivates the group through some unusual drills. No treadmills here. Aerobics? Pass. Pilates? Go next door. This crowd and many thousands of other apparent masochists are redefining the American workout. Call it a bored-with-the-old-workout thing, or aging baby-boomer denial or a post-Sept.-11 take charge/damn the terrorists trend. Whatever, the bar on fitness has been raised. The extremophile's creed: Go hard or go home.

The number of people choosing to go hard appears to be rising fast. Fitness instructors say classes similar in difficulty to the one Burch teaches are in high demand along with Pilates. A survey of 45,000 fitness instructors by the American Council on Exercise shows that extreme fitness classes, which prepare people for marathons, extreme cycling, mountain climbing and other sports that push the limits of endurance, are expected to be among the five most requested activities at health clubs in 2003.

"Extreme fitness activities are at the top of emerging trends. More people are exercising with a focus on enhancing their physical performance capabilities," says Cedric Bryant, chief exercise physiologist at ACE. "In the past, the focus was almost exclusively to derive health and fitness benefits such as lowering the risk of heart disease and weight. Now people are looking at exercise as a tool to become more competent at performing activities of daily living and more rigorous sports."

Only 30 years ago, most people regarded marathon running as an Olympic event. After American Frank Shorter won the 1972 Olympic gold medal for the 26-mile endurance test, the number of runners climbed from 25,000 in 1976 to 120,000 in 1980, 260,000 in 1990 and 451,000 in 2000.

Less than 10 years ago century bike races (100 miles) were considered extreme. Now they are routine. Participation in the original century race at Tucson, Ariz., has risen from 198 in 1983 to more than 6,000 in 2002.

"The number of people in these races is increasing so dramatically that 100-mile rides aren't considered extreme anymore," says Richard DeBernardis, race organizer and board member of the Bicycle Ride Directors Association. "Now if you want to be extreme, you have to ride 3,000 miles across the country or do a 200-mile event or ride all night."

Membership in the Adventure Cycling Association rose from 25,000 in 1980 to 40,000 in 2002, says executive director Bill Sawyer. Average age: 49 1/2 years.

Jim Pitre, 63, is chairman of the 2003 Race Across America, a 3,000-mile endurance test in which solo cyclists ride 20 hours a day. The number of solo racers registered next year is only 14, but people joining racing teams of two to four and corporate teams with eight riders are increasing fast.

Burch's extreme exercise group is typical of the new breed of go-hard athlete. Here's what Burch is dishing out for this day's fare:

• Step thrusts on aerobic steps stacked six to eight high while holding hand weights. 5 minutes.
• Stomach crunches while balancing on the small of your back on the top step. 5 minutes.
• Frog jump across a basketball court 20 times. 10 minutes. People are beginning to sweat.
• Knee slams. Tuck knees to abdomen and jump with arms raised. 5 minutes.
• Hell to heaven. Do frog jumps up three flights in stairwell four times. Just call it hell. 10 minutes.
• Run around building six times, size of a city block. No. Size of a city. 10 minutes.
• Himalayan climb. Walk in place, knees high while raising dumbbells. Arms and legs go Gumby. 5 minutes.
• Scale the whale. Bend over to the wooden floor from the waist, gripping small towel between hands and start pushing across the room back and forth. Indescribable. 10 minutes.

"We're not into that movie star, personal trainer, pampering crap," says Burch, who teaches 15 classes a week. "This is meant to be difficult, to build strength, to push your endurance to the limits and to discover what you are made of internally. Anyone who is motivated and wants to be challenged can do this. But if you can't stick with it mentally, you don't belong here."

Time to find the inner child and tell it to grow up.

For some of these people, going extreme is about training for the big one. Burch plans next spring to reach the summit of Mount Everest without oxygen. He's already proven himself in the Himalayas at 26,000 feet and recently finished scaling a dozen peaks in Greenland for extra conditioning. If he succeeds at Everest, he'll become only the seventh American to survive the attempt and join a list of fewer than 100 people worldwide who have inhaled the thinnest air on Earth and lived to talk about it.

Two members of the extreme fitness group, both in their 60s, are triathletes and do the classes for exercise candy. But many who heed the creed are pushing personal limits and reaching toward an internal summit only they can describe.

"About two years ago I was taking a normal Monday morning aerobics class at the same time Sean was teaching and wondered what that band of thieves in the other room was doing," says Michael Frankhuizen, 47, a contract manager at a large defense company near Centreville, Va.

"I didn't know what I was getting into when I started the class. I figured I could walk out. But something happens to you. Now when the little voice in your head says, 'No, you can't do it' — whatever "it" is — you can say, 'Yes, I can.' I approach things a lot differently now at work and in my personal life," says Frankhuizen, who has a visual disorder that makes sunlight seem blinding.

Hal Espen is editor of Outside, a magazine that has tracked and popularized endurance and adventure sports for 25 years.

"There are two ends of the extreme spectrum: risk and endurance," Espen says. "The most remarkable strides are being made on the endurance side of the equation. The bar has been dramatically raised in terms of what humans are capable of accomplishing. The masochism is remarkable."

John Biggs, of New York, says he made the transformation from the standard workout to the extreme in the past two years and noticed many others doing the same. It prompted him to start a magazine New York Extreme, which premiered this month to fill what he perceives as a new and growing niche.

"If you look around, you find more and more people who are getting into these difficult and strenuous activities," Biggs says. "A lot of people are just tired of the same old treadmill and running. These more extreme activities get people in touch with different parts of the body."

At 81, Carlton Medell ran his 150th marathon this year. He says it's about the stamina, mental discipline and camaraderie. He says he was a heavy drinker and a smoker before he took up running at age 50. Today he takes no medications except vitamins and makes sure he jogs or walks an hour a day six days a week.

"I see a lot of older people getting into the more strenuous exercise. I'm the director of New England's 65-plus (a seniors' fitness group). We have 410 members and three or four guys in their 90s still race walking. By all means this is the key to a healthy long life."

Among some of the key factors experts see behind the evolution of the American workout is better knowledge of the body and better equipment. Next to Lance Armstrong, the undisputed poster boy of ultimate fitness, it would be hard to find anyone as fit as Burch. In addition to the 15 fitness classes he teaches each week, he gives private martial arts courses. Frankhuizen says it's Burch's infectious attitude and focus on mental fortitude that draw ordinary people like him out to the leading edge. Once a person sees what they are capable of doing, how healthy they become, they don't want to go back, Burch says.

"Most people have no idea of the level of endurance that the human body is able to attain," Burch says. "The human body is like a Ferarri that most people keep parked in the garage."

Perhaps the new creed should be: Go hard or go downhill.