Peddling a Marriage of Mental and Physical Fitness
It is impossible to write about Los Angeles for any length of time without writing about fitness. Believe me, I’ve tried. But this is Southern California, after all, where being fit is regarded as a civic responsibility, which may be why so many locals have faces that are 15 years older than their bodies.
Despite my natural preference for writing about guilty pleasures, I recently found myself at the Sherman Oaks studio of Debbie Rocker, a former professional athlete who teaches a fitness regimen of her own devising called The Ride.
Allure magazine recently chose The Ride as one of the three best fitness classes in the nation. “Cycling that’s indoors but extreme” was the way the magazine characterized it.
According to the International Health, Racquet & Sportclub Assn., there are now more fitness studios in the United States than ever before--15,372 of them earlier this year, the last time the association counted.
Because the would-be fit have so many places to choose from, workout centers are under increasing pressure to offer something unique. A club in New York City has a popular class called Abs, Thighs and Gossip taught by a drag queen who is equally devoted to dish and making his clients sweat. The same club offers courses in which clients pretend to be firefighters and drag around heavy equipment while sirens blare.
The Valley is no stranger to the fitness trend. Indeed it has been a pioneer in it. Tae Bo, Billy Blanks’ wildly popular blend of kick boxing and spiritual uplift, was born in a garage in Reseda (somebody should write a book about the garage as an incubator of new ideas). Indeed, Rocker’s program, The Ride (the term is trademarked), is housed in the Sherman Oaks mini-mall formerly occupied by Blanks.
Fitness Ride Called Intense
The Ride, Rocker explains, combines indoor cycling and yoga. Engaging and articulate, as effective teachers usually are, Rocker wouldn’t describe The Ride as “extreme.” She’d call it intense. As Rocker or one of her instructors guides them, up to 40 clients pedal furiously on German-made stationary bikes, typically for 40 minutes at a time. The room in which they ride is darkened, and carefully selected music plays (everything from Sarah McLachlan to Dusty Springfield) as Rocker encourages them through their imaginary journey.
As Rocker explains in her promotional material, “We use The Ride as a metaphor for life. The most critical elements of working out are focus, commitment and endurance. We are training for the longest event of all--life, and all of its ups and downs. If you can commit to ‘staying with it’ on a tough hill, and to riding through discomfort and fear in class, then chances are that you will be able to use that same experience in your daily life.”
Although one of my rules is to never take advice from someone who has competed in a triathlon, as Rocker has, she is persuasive in her emphasis on balance.
“My motto is ‘The next level of fitness isn’t just physical,’ ” she says. So after they get all sweated up on their bikes, clients are encouraged to take a yoga class, where they stretch and work on issues like inner peace. Yoga is an integral part of the program, so integral that the staff tells the occasional yoga joke.
Rocker has a dog the size of a refrigerator, an enormous English mastiff named Sydney who is as torpid as Rocker is intense. “We have the yin and the yang here,” she says, with a laugh. “Sydney represents shavasana,” which is really funny if you know shavasana is Sanskrit for yoga’s corpse pose.
Rocker, who set a world record in cross-country cycling 15 years ago when she rode a tandem bike from Huntington Beach to Atlantic City in less than 12 days, thinks of herself as a businessperson whose passion is fitness.
Indoor Cycling Is Her Game
Last year, she moved her studio to the Valley from West Hollywood after the number of indoor-cycling programs in her neighborhood exploded from one--her own--to 10. “That was actually good news,” she says. “I feel proud that my instructors open their own studios and become stars in their own right.”
Rocker emphasizes that she offers indoor cycling. She is careful not to use the term Spinning, trademarked by someone else. But she says she was part of that phenomenon, as well. “I came in in the very early years,” she says. “I’m the one who brought Spinning to New York, and I really started the boom.”
The way Rocker teaches it, indoor cycling burns fat and expends large numbers of calories. But she insists that it is the emotional and spiritual benefits that are most attractive to clients, who have included such celebrity fitness buffs as Demi Moore and David Duchovny.
“We have enormous transformations, and it’s not just weight loss,” Rocker says. “It’s like you’re all in intensive therapy for 40 minutes.”
Instead of kvelling about how many pounds they’ve dropped, clients are more likely to say the program has helped them deal with a difficult boss or helped them through a painful transition, such as a divorce, Rocker says.
“I think most people are doing it because they love what happens in class.” That varies from session to session, depending on the instructor and on any new insights the instructor has and is able to pass on.
Empowering Others Teacher’s Aim
Over the years I’ve noticed that charismatic fitness people often develop almost cult-like followings. I ask Rocker if that is an issue in her work.
“The potential for that is huge when you touch people,” she acknowledges. “My teaching is successful because I work to empower people, not make them dependent. That’s where that whole guru . . . thing goes awry.”
Rocker wants to enhance independence, not create followers, she makes clear.
“The mark of a true master,” she says, “is not how many students he has but how many masters he creates.”
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Spotlight runs every Friday. Patricia Ward Biederman can be reached at valley.news@latimes.com.