This trip I decided to try and “offset” some of the predicted over eating by getting my butt out moving. I signed up for a 2 week ClassPass trial, which is a really good way to work out what sorts of classes are available when travelling, because every city has a totally different scene. Plus I was doing 6am classes before heading to the office, so distance was a big deciding factor!

Core Power Yoga Queen Anne

I have only just realized this place is all over the country! I totally thought it was a Seattle thing 😂😂 It was very popular!! I went for the Monday 6 am and couldn’t get into the core power class so tried the sculpt class. It’s a good class. Set in a warm room, you go through some yoga moves to start, and after a little you incorporate hand weights into your yoga moves. A cool concept and a good work out.

I have this weird thing where I struggle when I don’t know what the format of the class is. I don’t seem to concentrate on the class, I spend my whole time trying to work out how much time is left 😁 so I really need the instructor to give me an idea of what is going on. This is one of my complaints about this class: no real guidance. It was my first time in the studio, and no one gave me any info like: where to put my stuff, what was happening in the class or HOW MANY WEIGHTS I NEEDED. Turns out I guessed that wrong! This is one of the basics, make sure people know what they are doing!

Would I go again? Yeah, the concept is good, the experience just needs some work.

Pure Barre, Queen Anne

I think I’ve done this class in LA before. You can always count on a barre class to give you a killer workout. Those ballet girls are tough!

The instructor was really helpful. At the start she came over and introduced herself, let me know what was happening in the class and what to do if things got too tough. Oh yeah, and showed me where the lockers were, bathroom etc. You know, all the helpful stuff.

The class was good, it’s hard. Why do I have no muscles? I’d definitely go back, but I don’t know if I can make barre my go to exercise class.

Barrys Bootcamp Seattle

You know I love Barry’s. This actually is my go to, even when I lived in London (along with Psycle) I know the format, it works me friggin hard, and let’s face it, it’s cool.

The Seattle studio is a lot smaller than the LA ones, which I guess makes sense. But it’s still the same quality class.

I’ve got a couple of silly complaints though: first up, when I walked in the staff were eating a pile of crinkle cut fries! WTF!! Surely that goes against some kind of Barrys philosophy! I mean, eat what you want, but outside the studio!!! It’s so mean! Coming into to work your butt off knowing it’s going to be hard and then smelling fries!! Mean!!

Also, I asked to switch to double floor but there wasn’t one available. Turns out there was, they just keep it for the instructor to demonstrate. I’ve never seen another Barrys do that. It made me cross because my feet were killing after standing in heels all day for 3 days and the thought of running scared me. Turns out, it really helped!

But, you know all of it doesn’t really matter, I love Barrys. I was straight back to it when I got home to LA.

Studio 3, Queen Anne

My last day in Seattle and it was time to test a spin class! Luckily this one was 2 mins walk away because by this point, I was tired!!!

This is a a really cute little studio. I say little, there’s 3 parts to it and I only looked at 1 of them! The spin studio is laid out really well. They’ve used a tiered approach so everyone can see well and you don’t feel like you’re on top of anyone. Plus the instructor was good, he counted things down well, including when you got to the half way point of the class and then how many songs left. I really like this approach. Plus the workout itself was good. It follows the Soulcycle approach, which I’m a big fan of.

So some general things I noticed about the Seattle studio scene

• They seem to like a lot of CrossFit. There looks like more of these studios than anything else, and most of them aren’t on ClassPass
• It doesn’t feel as varied as it does in LA. I was in a pretty central location and didn’t feel like I had lots of different options. Maybe they just don’t go on ClassPass? In which case, I need an easy way to find out what is what.
• No one gives you sweat towels!!!! Is this part of the Washington environmental approach? I love and need a sweat towel!! Now, that’s not entirely fair, you get then in Barrys like you normally do.