BY ALINE REYNOLDS | Six-year-old Jacqueline can’t walk up more than five steps of stairs at a time due to a genetic muscular disease. But with a little help from her father, Alex Kostyuchenko, the youngster was able to climb a wall and navigate through advanced play equipment at Exerblast, an interactive fitness center, which just opened at 100 Reade St. in Tribeca.
“[The equipment] was hard for her, but she felt like [it was] built in a way that she was able to do it. It was a very positive experience,” said the proud father.
Playing with her peers, something her disability usually prevents, will undoubtedly strengthen Jacqueline’s muscles and boost her self-esteem, according to her father. “It’s starting to build her confidence and gave her inspiration,” he said.
Exerblast caters to adults as well as children ages five through 12 of all abilities, and drives home the point that exercise should be not only physically rewarding but enjoyable.
“We’re trying to create a new lifestyle where you get rewards for taking the fitness option,” said co-founder and personal trainer Kate Gyllenhaal, whose daughters attend P.S. 150 and P.S. 276. Gyllenhaal’s title at Exerblast is “Chief Fun Officer.”
“After teaching fitness for 30 years, I wanted to figure out how to distract [kids] by having fun, and as a side benefit, give them a really good workout,” said Gyllenhaal.
The center is also meant to unite parents and children, explained co-founder Don Sunderland, Exerblast’s president and chief executive officer. “The whole idea is that we want to get families involved in physical activity by doing it together,” he said.
The 6,400 square foot, two-floor space, which opened on Sat., June 4, is dubbed “Botannia,” a fictional world of supernatural plant characters, led by Commander “Pi” (short for “pineapple”), that direct the workouts and rely on the participants to collect energy for the creatures’ survival.
This “energy” is the equivalent of one’s motion during exercise, which is tracked by an iPod Touch (that also monitors the individual’s calorie burn count) and later converts it into points. The exercisers steadily collect points over the course of several sessions until they win a prize, such as free play time in the center or a birthday party.
The center’s first floor features a large “climb-a-tron,” whose connectors are attached to plastic eyeballs that have electronic monitors, and a power wheel meant to teach youths motor coordination. The floor has colored stripes that lead the trainees down to the basement, which is comprised of an enclosed room with exercise balls, a stretching and meditation room, along with a dining room and two fitness rooms.
One of the fitness rooms is used for aerobic classes in which the exercisers mimic the movements of animated, talking characters that appear on a screen in front of them. Another has balancing floor gadgets for youngsters and moving spotlights they’re supposed to “catch” with their hands and feet. There is also a small room filled with silver exercise balls, where the children leap from one to another, acquiring balance and coordination skills along the way.
“If we’re going to reach kids these days, we have to do it through technology,” said Gyllenhaal of the activities.
The stretching chamber, nicknamed “Blastdown,” is where exercisers send the energy they’ve accumulated into a portal to Botannia. The families can perform up to 45 different stretches on yoga blocks, and are supposed to direct all their stress into a black piece of cloth, meant to represent a black hole.
“The blocks stretch your body in ways you’d never be able to do on your own,” said Gyllenhaal, as her eight-year-old daughter, Mavi, eagerly did a backbend atop the furniture.
Exerblast members receive nine training sessions, each lasting 45 minutes, which they can use over a period of one month or longer. Gyllenhaal recommends frequenting the center three times a week to begin to see and feel a difference.
The founders’ long-term vision is to make Exerblast a national franchise and to propagate their “exercise can be fun” philosophy in public schools and community centers around the country that are starved of gyms or strong physical education programs.
“We all have it deep within our hearts that we want to develop models that can go into those venues as well,” said Sunderland, who previously co-founded an alternative public school on the Upper West Side.
“Eventually, we’d like to bring this to all the kids who really need it,” said Gyllenhaal.
