POWR-ZONE Columbus features SportsArt equipment as part of its sustainable fitness experience. Credit: Siena Kessler | Arts & Life Editor
POWR-ZONE Columbus, a new fitness and wellness destination, will open its doors Thursday, Sept. 10, with a grand opening that will give attendees a firsthand look at the facility’s fitness equipment, coach-led workouts and sustainable technology.
From 9 a.m. to noon, guests can tour the facility, located at 1020 Dennison Ave., see SportsArt’s equipment and learn about POWR-ZONE’s small-group training programs. Craig Lerner, founder of Involve, said guests can expect to learn how the space combines the SportsArt sustainable equipment and fitness programming.
“This is a sponsored experience that [SportsArt] is helping to produce,” Lerner said. “This is owned by a new company that came out of my agency called WellXM. WellXM is the owner of this space.”
Unlike a traditional open gym, POWR-ZONE is designed with an emphasis on community, said Lerner. The facility is owned and operated by WellXM, a Columbus-based company created by Involve.
Lerner said the workouts are designed to change from cycle to cycle while maintaining the same overall format — combining strength, cardio and conditioning into 30-, 45- and 60-minute coach-led sessions.
Sadie Klaff, an Ohio State graduate and certified personal trainer who will lead classes at POWR-ZONE, said the small-group setting allows instructors to provide more individualized attention than traditional group fitness classes.
“The smaller group aspect is unique,” Klaff said. “You can give individualized feedback, there’s no microphone. It’s very much connected to who you are talking to to get that more personal training but in a group setting.”
Thinking back to her time at Ohio State, Klaff said community is an underlying reason behind the popularity of group classes.
“There’s a reason why group fitness people have a following at the RPAC, there’s a reason why the classes fill up and it’s the same people every week,” Klaff said. “You create that community, you create that bond, that trust with an instructor.”
Klaff said the group setting can also make exercise feel more approachable to beginners.
“Having someone there to cheer you on, it’s that community,” Klaff said. “I taught group fitness at Ohio State and that’s why I am still in the group fitness world. It’s amazing to see the community build and how excited people are to just take that 30, 45 minutes [or] an hour of the day to go and do something for them.”?
Klaff said she works on making the workouts accessible to participants with different fitness backgrounds and abilities.?
“I’m very focused on making sure the form is proper, and if they do have an injury, I can make modifications so there are no limits on what they are able to do,” Klaff said.
Sustainability is another major component of the space. The facility uses SportsArts’ ECO-POWR cardio equipment, which converts energy generated from workouts into electricity, according to Ruben Mejia, executive vice president of SportsArt.
“With the ECO-POWR equipment, every pedal [and] every stride creates energy,” Mejia said. “Every other piece of workout equipment, that energy dissipates into heat, but with our equipment, we’re capturing that energy and feeding it back directly and immediately to the local grid. We’re preventing a power plant from burning fossil fuels when you’re exercising, so there’s a bit of a higher purpose to not just losing weight, burning calories and getting in shape. You’re actually making a difference on the planet.”
Mejia said SportsArt has had this technology for years, but growing interest in sustainability has driven its continued development and new opening.
“We’ve had this technology since 2010,” Mejia said. “We’ve had three different variations of it but with the more popular it gets and more people caring about sustainability, it gives us more motivation to create other products that also generate electricity and contribute to somebody’s sustainable mission.”
Lerner said the technology could be particularly appealing to younger consumers, including Ohio State students.
“From the college standpoint, that’s where the ECO-POWR is really big,” Lerner said. “Students, younger consumers, the younger audience is pretty motivated by sustainability and social consciousness in general.”
During workouts, there will be a screen to show participants just how much energy they are producing.
“There’s going to be a screen called POWR+ that will show the energy produced from their workout,” Lerner said. “They can see the kilowatt hours that they’re producing right now.”
Lerner said POWR-ZONE also hopes to collaborate with Ohio State students interested in the world of fitness.
“Because we’re gonna be class-driven and workshop-driven, I’d say that [we will] collaborate with students who are in personal training and exercise physiology,” Lerner said.
As the Columbus location develops, Lerner said the programming will continue to grow based on feedback.
“The idea of the program evolving, meeting the needs of more, getting more pros more excited about how they can make it their own,” Lerner said. “I think it’s an evolution of adding more depth to what POWR-ZONE training will mean.”
Classes will begin next week, with two POWR-ZONE training classes scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays and yoga classes on Wednesdays, Lerner said.
