Uplift Sculpt Fusion Is Nowhere Near as Easy as It Sounds

I’m sort of obsessed with Uplift, maybe I’ve mentioned that?

I’m Facebook friends with the owners and many of the instructors. I have girl crushes on all of them. They’re all awesome.

A few weeks ago, they introduced a new class: Sculpt Fusion.

Sounds easy enough, right? They describe it as being “low-impact” on the site, so I thought I’d be in for something like a barre class. I saw on Facebook that the lovely Chelsea Dornan, who teaches it, was going on vacation and that lit a fire under my ass to get there and take it before she left for vacation.

I walked in, and she told me to take my shoes off. Wait, what??

Also, I took the class four days post-marathon. I really wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into, but I was excited to try Chelsea’s new class.

The first thing I noticed (after taking my shoes off) was that the room was warm. She said this was to keep muscles from cooling down too quickly, since you hold positions longer and do smaller movements.

The class was definitely a unique one!

We started out with some very fast yoga flows – downward dog to plank, repeat, repeat, repeat. We also did a TON of holding poses for what felt like 1,000 breaths. It didn’t help that I was four days out from the marathon, I’m sure, but my legs were en fuego, and I sort of wanted to kill sweet little Chelsea. I know I gave her approximately a million glares.

She coached us through coordinating our breath with the movements, and emphasized the importance of doing so. While I do yoga more for the mental benefits and the stretching, and not the calories burn, I loved that this was definitely a legit workout.

She developed the class, she said, because she has a passion for yoga, but thinks that yoga misses out on some muscle groups, especially on the front side of the body, so adding weights works you harder and strengthens both sides of the body equally.

Oh yeah. There’s weights. We did triangle pose with the weights, (as well as a few other poses) and OW OW OW. My waist certainly felt it.

You guys know I love my yoga and my Uplift, so I’m pretty sure this class will become one of my regular favorites. Currently, it only appears on the schedule a few times a week, but I hope they add more times!

Since it is lower-impact, this is probably the most accessible class Uplift offers. While their other workouts are scalable, the jumping and fast-paced workouts could be intimidating to some beginners, but I think Sculpt Fusion is one almost anyone could do. (Hey, Mom? Wanna try?)

We ended class with a fairly long stretching segment, which was amazing.

Jen and I were talking about Uplift and Chelsea when we rode bikes last weekend. Chelsea’s style is really intriguing, because she isn’t super peppy like other instructors. She’s just cool as shit, and you hope that you can impress her holding your plank for a few more seconds.

When I walked out of the class, Chelsea asked me what I thought and I told her it was WAY harder than I expected. She was really pleased with that answer. At the time, I was not pleased with this. I was hoping for a fairly easy class as part of my recovery, and this was not that. I’m really excited to try it again though.

Have you ever done yoga with weights? What kind of personality do you look for in fitness instructors?