If you’re trying to find the Functional Fitness studio, and you find yourself on a rural road surrounded by farms, don’t worry, you’re not lost: Functional Fitness is located on the same property as the home of Dorothy Ames, on sprawling rural acres surrounded by beautiful Hopewell countryside.
Working out at Functional Fitness is a far cry from a crowded strip mall storefront that is the setting for most Pilates places. And that’s no accident. Ames, a New York native and mother of four, founded Functional Fitness six years ago after 30 years working at “big box” chain gyms.
“I loved working at all of them, but I had this goal of founding a place where people could come in and work out without the light, the giant windows and the bikes.”
Functional Fitness, by contrast, has a strict limit of four people per fitness class. Ames said many friendships have been founded because of her little studio.
“We’re kind of almost like a family,” she said.
Ames and her small staff of experienced trainers run pilates, yoga, spinning and strength training classes, nutrition counseling, a boot camp and more. Ames is certified to develop fitness programs for people dealing with ailments such as breast cancer and fibromialgia.
The heart of Functional Fitness, and its namesake, is the focus on training students for “functional” movements they will replicate in everyday life, like twisting sideways and picking up a bag of groceries. That’s a movement that can cause injury unless the person is strong enough in the right areas, Ames said. Most of Ames’s programs focus on strengthening the “core” muscles connected to the spine, which she said helps prevent back injuries.
The flexible approach caters to high-end, hardcore fitness fans as well as people who are trying to recover from injuries, Ames said. Both kinds of people, and people of all levels of fitness in between are among the 60 or so students currently enrolled in classes. The flexible approach also extends to pricing and scheduling. Ames said no one ever pays a fee for missing a class – instead they have a punch card that gets punched every time they take a class. So there’s never a penalty if someone has to take a week off because of kids or some other life demand.
One of the newer services offered at Functional Fitness is lifestyle weight management, an eating plan tailored to the individual desires of the client, which helps people eat healthily without sacrificing their favorite foods.
“We analyze what they eat, look at the whole picture and try to tweak it so they can eat whatever they want but not feel like they’re on a diet,” Ames said In the near future, Functional Fitness will begin offering Zumba classes, an exercise based on Latin dancing.
All in all, functional fitness offers a workout like no other gym.
“We’re small and we’re personal and we have expertise,” Ames said.
Functional Fitness is located at 67 Harbourton-Mt. Airy Road in Hopewell. For more information, go online to funfitnj.com or call (609) 477-9407.
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