You may have heard about Orangetheory Fitness, a new type of workout studio with locations all over the country. A friend of mine in California had told me about it, but I didn’t get the chance to try it before we moved to DC. However, there is a studio near my office and they offer one class free, so we decided to check it out.

Orangetheory is an interval workout broken up into rowing machine portions, treadmill portions, and TRX/free weight portions, so you get your heart rate up pretty high right away and keep it there. Everyone wears a heart rate monitor (provided by or purchased from them), and your heart rate is displayed up on TV monitors around the studio. You also recieve an email afterward with all your stats, including your estimated calorie burn. The “orange” in the name comes from the fact that you are supposed to try to keep your heart rate in the orange zone for as long as possible during the hour-long workout.

Also, basically everything in there is orange.

You set your treadmill speed and incline yourself, and you can row and do the other exercises at your own pace, but the instructor strongly encourages you to push yourself as much as possible. In the class we went to, we were all supposed to crank the incline on the treadmills up as high as they could go, even if we were just walking or jogging. You’re also supposed do certain distances and numbers of reps, all while keeping your heart rate up, so it’s pretty intense.

While they say the workout is for all fitness levels, I don’t think it would be great for beginners. There wasn’t any instruction on how to use the machines and very little on how to do the other exercises (although the instructor did demonstrate at the beginning, and there was a video screen to look at if you forget what you are supposed to be doing), and there is only one instructor for a full room of people doing several things at once, so he or she can’t be watching everyone all the time. I actually realized after the fact that I didn’t run or row the correct distances, though I’m not sure how critical that was. Plus, some of the ab exercises we were doing were so hard that I could barely do them, and I wasn’t sure how to modify them, so I ended up moving on to the next exercise without doing the full number of suggested reps.

However, if you have at least a little experience working out, using a treadmill, and using a rowing machine… and if you want to work really hard, burn a ton of calories, and sweat a LOT, you will enjoy Orange Theory. I had some trouble with my heart rate monitor (make sure you consider the fact that you’ll be wearing a strap around your chest when choosing a sports bra), but we both really liked the workout and have already signed up to try out classes at the new studio that’s opening near our house soon.

I’ll just have to overlook the fact that orange is the color of evil. (Go Dawgs!)