Co-founder Janet Crown opened Burn 60 in 2005, an increasingly popular Brentwood fitness studio specializing in interval training, to give busy moms, celebrities and workout junkies a challenging 60-minute “total fitness solution,” Crown explained on the studio’s site.

What It Is And How It Works
Burn 60 focuses on interval training: stringing together a variety of high-intensity exercises, such as sprinting or lifting, broken up by short breaks. Each class includes 30 minutes of cardio on a treadmill and 30 minutes of strength training using materials such as dumbbells, resistance cords and more. However the cardio and strength training each occur in 15-minute increments in between short periods of rest throughout the hour-long fitness challenge.
Crown’s studio used the basic interval method to create eight classes concentrating on different sections of the body or fitness goals. For example, Perpetual Burn helps clients “utilize fat stores for energy instead of muscle tissue…designed to shock the body into adaptation and make this dynamic workout unequalled for increasing 'Lean Body' mass while 'Burning body fat,” according to Crown’s site.
Interval training burns more calories than less-intense cardio such as running five miles on a treadmill, according to Burn 60 trainer Carrie Curtis, the body burns more calories afterwards too because it takes energy to recover from such a difficult workout. Due to the difficulty of interval training, Curtis recommends to space out works out two to three days a week and engage in some other exercise routine the rest of the week to avoid overtraining. Curtis, an expert in cardio and strength training, has been teaching workout classes for 21 years.

Taking A Class
This week I took Burn 60’s Arms & Abs class with Carrie Curtis, which strengthens the core as well as utilizes dumbbells to tone your arms. There was only one other woman in my 1pm class, allowing for a very personalized experience.
Curtis warmed us up with 15 minutes on the treadmill, alternating between increasingly fast sprints and rest periods. Next, the three of us took to the floor, pushing and lifting during upper body strength training and abs exercises. The last half we went back to the treadmill, following Curtis’s instructions to switch between 30, 60 and 90-second full-on sprints in between rest periods before returning the floor and finishing with strength exercises.

Pros And Cons
Overall I experienced a demanding and personalized workout for free (there is no charge for your first class). The college prices are $20 per class, which can be pricey if you want to go multiple times per week. The grueling interval method successfully works the entire body, saving time for clients who do both strength and cardio routines regularly.
However in typical L.A. fashion, the distance and probability of traffic are chief concerns. Located in Brentwood, the studio is a trek for USC students and almost impossible without a car. The most direct route is to take the 10 Freeway to the 405 North, which although only took me 30 minutes at noon on a Monday, would take considerably longer during peak traffic hours. I would recommend the studio if you live closer to Brentwood but the workout was not strenuous enough to be worth the long drive for Angelenos living closer to USC or downtown L.A.

 

FitGirl is a weekly health and fitness column. If you have any questions you want to see answered feel free to email me.