Blood, Sweat, & Fears
“TUNE IN TO YOURSELF,” says Taryn Toomey, the latest étoile du jour to light up the fitness world, addressing a women’s retreat in upstate New York last summer. “Know there’s a part of you that really wants the suffering and part of you that really wants the awakening. “Know who’s running the show.”
Therein lies the essence of the Taryn Toomey phenomenon—suffering and awakening, hurting and healing. Toomey is the birthmother of The Class, a body-depleting, mind-bending workout that defies both definition and category. Physically demanding and emotionally exhausting, it is, to its throngs of acolytes who sweat regularly in her signature TriBeCa gym, spiritually and psychically cathartic.
The hallmark of The Class is a series of repetitive motions devoid of rep count; there is no telling when the torture will end, an approach that plunges you entirely into the moment. Meshing high-intensity calisthenics with impassioned, confessional, almost feral exhortations, Toomey doesn’t simply want you to feel the burn—she wants you to experience it as an existential crisis.
“There’s a very specific way we train our teachers, of how we open the room,” says Toomey. “There’s an arc of the class, it’s how we build trust. There’s the physical, the emotional, the energetic. Then there is the spiritual. And we let you into that door through the body.”
The Class didn’t so much start
