FUN FITNESS

Jeno Giordano Opens SwingFit, A New, Innovative Fitness Center

You won’t find heavy weights in the SwingFit fitness center, opened recently at 1881 Easy St. (off Nelson Rd.) in Lake Charles. You won’t find benches, step platforms, treadmills, spin bikes, or any other traditional exercise equipment.

What you will find is a fun, innovative way to get fit — while feeling like a kid again.

The center’s main room is taken up by a huge steel frame, rising almost to the ceiling. Suspended from the frame are fabric straps, which are in turn attached to “swing” seats — padded bars attached to two short straps suspended from the main strap. Think of a child’s backyard tree swing.

Attached further up on the main strap are two handles. Giordano sits in one of the swings, grabs the handles, and begins swinging, flexing core muscles and legs, all the while pulling up and down on the swing’s handles — pull ups, without the stress on elbows and wrists that can be caused by traditional bar pullups using full body weight. It’s a full-body workout, with almost no stress at all on joints.

“You get the kind of full-body workout in 10 minutes using SwingFit that you get on regular gym equipment in two hours,” Giordano says. “Every muscle in your body is undergoing a reaction. All of the muscles are worked at once.”

And it’s not just an anaerobic (strength) workout. Keeping the position of the swing going increases blood flow, giving you an aerobic workout, as well, again without stress on joints.

Think of it as “air aerobics,” as opposed to water aerobics.

Back To Ground Zero

The idea that would eventually become SwingFit came to Giordano in the summer of 2011, as he was visiting a friend. He was sitting in a suspended swing chair at the friend’s house, gazing up into the skylight above the seat.

“(The idea) hit me like a speeding bullet,” he says. “I just saw people swinging in the air, working out in a way that was fun, and made them feel free, like flight.”

Giordano immediately began sketching out his vision, and in a few months, it began to take shape in his backyard. In 2012, he put a basic model, with simple stirrups for feet and handles attached to straps — the precursor to today’s equipment — in Performance Evolution in Lake Charles. The equipment became popular, but it wasn’t as “user-friendly” as Giordano wanted it to be. He went back to the drawing board, spending months in California, working with designers to perfect his vision.

“We went back to ground zero,” says Giordano.

The result is SwingFit, and it offers several advantages over the former incarnation.

First, says Giordano, the bar seat makes the apparatus much easier to use, and much more accessible to those with disabilities, joint problems, or recovering from surgery.

“The seat really opened up our demographic,” Giordano says. “SwingFit can be used by people of any age, at any fitness level.”

The new SwingFit is also quieter than the initial model, and it boasts new and stronger fabrics for straps, heavier duty attachment rings, and “flight school attachments,” short straps with handles that attach to the main strap of the swing, offering those new to the equipment an easier option over the longer handles. These “training wheels” allow for a gentle introduction to SwingFit.

“We use the flight school attachments while we show users how to communicate with their bodies, so to speak, while using the equipment and learning the program,” says Giordano.

After all, he says, being on a swing is something adults most often haven’t done in decades.

State-Of-The-Art

Giordano’s new facility is state of the art, and most of it has been designed and handcrafted by Giordano himself.

“We designed the frame, and it’s handcrafted,” says Giordano. “We imported the components for the mat underneath the frame.”

Giordano and his staff even designed and built the concrete front desk; the sleek curve and satin finish lend to the modern, high-tech look of the place.

The building is equipped with a state-of-the-art sound system to allow members to hear workout leaders clearly, no matter where they are in the room; and a special TV and camera system allows the exercisers at the back of the room to see the instructor or workout leader clearly.

But the real technology is in a side room of the building, where you’ll find a computer station, scale, and a couple of other machines you probably aren’t familiar with.

The futuristic-looking Fit 3D body scanner, for instance, is used to obtain accurate body measurements. SwingFit members who choose to utilize the scan (it’s an option, not a requirement) simply stand on a small platform in front of an arm that contains the scanning device. Once the baseline measurements are obtained, it’s a simple matter to track your progress with follow-up scans after you’ve been working out for a time.

Why won’t new members be familiar with this equipment? Because it’s not available anywhere else in the Southern belt, from Florida to Arizona, says Giordano.

“In fact, we’re only the 11th facility in the world to have this equipment,” he says.

There are also machines to track body mass, muscle strength and flexibility. Again, all testing and measuring is optional, but it does help members keep better track of their progress, says Giordano, and allows them to adjust their workouts for optimum results.

Data is stored on the computer, accessible by a password known only to the member.

“I can’t even get into someone else’s file to see their data,” says Giordano.

The center is membership-only, and a six-month membership is $110. Members have unlimited access to the equipment during the center’s hours of operation: 5 am-7:15 pm. Most members exercise three times per week, says Giordano, but there’s no minimum or maximum. “Flight school” classes — 45-minute classes with personal training in using the apparatus — are held daily.

For more information about SwingFit, visit SwingFit.us.