Staying Alive: Healthworks’ Bootcamp

Blogging, we learned this week, is not the best occupation for people who would rather not die.

Here at Bostonista, we were worried about our lifestyle well before the Times article materialized, though our concerns focused less on imminent heart failure and more on our daily tendency to eat the chocolate–covered items that constantly bombard our office.

Either way, it’s a good thing we tried Healthworks’ Bootcamp.

We signed up for the month-long, twice-weekly program to jump-start a workout routine that had lately become mostly an excuse to watch Hills re-runs. (Full disclosure: We also chose it because we weren’t sure we were mature enough for Ultimate Bootcamp’s four-day-a-week commitment.)

The program, led by trainer Ilene Kenney, fully reinforced exactly how hard we had not been working before. Each day involved 15-minute treadmill warm-ups at a 10 percent incline, followed by a zillion repetitions of things called thrusters (a terrible combination of squats and overhead presses) and wall-balls (bouncing an 8-pound medicine ball overhead against a wall, also combined with squats).

The exercises were not as military-style as we expected of a bootcamp—though we did do plenty of pushups—and were more in line with the workouts we imagine large men undertake at their nearest Bally’s. (Except, you know, that our exercises were completed with 15-pound weights at an all-women’s gym.)

Ilene herself was just how you want a trainer to be: tough, but also kind of fun. And with the visibly-defined-muscles-beneath-DriFit that prove she really does know how to get results.

Our only complaint? Just as we were starting to see results of our own, bootcamp was over. And there was still way too much chocolate at the office.

Healthworks Bootcamp, $140 for eight sessions, healthworksfitness.com.