Review: Flirty Girl Fitness brings sexy back to aerobics
Review: Flirty Girl Fitness brings sexy back to aerobics
Instructors Naledi Sesinyi and Jaydin Christine help Chicago women bring out 'untapped sexiness' through dance fitness routines
Editor’s note: The following interview was originally written and published in the Chicago Defender by Shamontiel L. Vaughn on May 19, 2009. While the link works, Shamontiel’s byline was removed after an online conversion. The original review has been repurposed with minimal proofreading for readability. Unfortunately, both the Randolph location and a second location (2215 N. Halsted St.) in Chicago closed after a 10-year run from May 2007 to September 2017. Click here to read more posts by Shamontiel from the Chicago Defender.
The first time someone asked me to go to Flirty Girl Fitness with her, I thought, “Why would I want to go to a fitness center that teaches me how to do a lap dance, twirl on a pole or become a video vixen?”
But I kept hearing about the fitness club. Chicago weather is unpredictable, standard health clubs are sometimes too expensive and monotonous, and I know my own exercise tapes by heart. So off I went.
Flirty Girl has a fitting name. [Even from the] free parking lot area a couple blocks [away] from Harpo Studios at 1325 W. Randolph St., [you can see that] the exercise studio is boldly feminine. Visitors are greeted with butterflies on the building sign, pink boxing gloves, pink boxing bags in glass workout studios, fancy bowl sinks in the bathroom, and a dazzling chandelier hanging from the ceiling by the front desk.
The bar area has vitamin drinks (along with Flirtinis of course), fashionable cupped stools, brick walls match the brown in the long L-shaped lounge area, and the studios and restroom areas are immaculate.
The studio also has a manicure and pedicure area in the back (pink chairs of course), and an outside deck with pink overhead lights that flash at night. Bachelorette and birthday parties commonly visit this area, as well as partygoers who don’t want to deal with the bar scene at local nightclubs. Celebrities like Chrisette Michelle, Lisa Raye and D. Woods of Danity Kane have visited too.
As pretty as Flirty Girl is, I was still wondering what to expect exercising in the Video Vixen and Beginner Pole Tricks courses. And I wasn’t the only hesitant one.
“I was nervous … I didn’t know I had a lot of it in me,” said student Jasmine, after her first pole dancing course. “It brought out some untapped sexuality.”
Instructor Naledi Sesinyi smiles about her hesitant students and their tentativeness to learn some of the moves in her Pole Dance, House Music Honeys, Booty Beat and other cardio courses.
“I deal with (the hesitancy) by smiling and being absolutely accepting of every judgment,” Sesinyi, the former four-year NBA Chicago Bulls cheerleader said. “A lot of the women here are educated, professional women … we just happen to have a very sexy way of presenting our educational skills. We’ve heard the whole thing of ‘I don’t want to be a stripper,’ but when they come to the classes, there’s a structure to it. They feel the sweat. They feel the agony. They feel muscles they haven’t felt before.”
Learning how to do the “fireman” (swinging your legs around a pole to do full circles), the “diva” (a squatting motion after walking in a circle) and the “Cleopatra” (legs open and balanced against the pole) left no room for bashfulness in Sesinyi’s class.
Recommended Read: “My 11:11 list: Getting fit and melanin-rich ~ Top 5 early-morning-fitness routines with women of color”
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As an onlooker, I watched students trying to figure out how to coordinate each movement, making the most rhythmically challenged students step up their game and stop worrying about the onlookers outside of the glass studio.
They were just trying to get the routines down with sexy music like “Rock On” by David Essex playing in the background, lights out, and ceiling dimmers shining along their arms and legs.
The students in each class varied. There were 20-somethings mixed in with 40-somethings in the Pole Dance class and Video Vixen class.
“I’ve taught women who were like 65,” said Video Vixen and Lap Dance instructor, Jaydin Christine, who admits she hates working out but loves dancing. “It’s very diverse.”
Christine, also a singer and songwriter, said she meets women all the time who are shy about some of the dance moves.
“I tell [my students] it’s nothing here but you and the mirror,” she said. “[Flirty Girl Fitness] is a great place to be somebody that you wouldn’t normally be. It helps boost your confidence.”
Jaydin Christine’s Video Vixen course on Friday incorporates more African style dances and funky hip hop moves. If you can already dance, it’s fun and pretty easy to follow along.
But I don’t know who had the idea of putting “beginner” before the Beginner Pole Tricks course I took [on] Sunday. As a regular weight lifter who has taken weight training, dance and aerobics classes before, I’ve never been to a class that works the biceps, calves, shoulders and inner thighs anything like Beginner Pole Tricks class.
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The instructor, Diana, swung upside down from a pole, flailed her arms around with only her legs to balance her at the top of the pole, and swirled around the pole on one leg like the flag colors in a barbershop pole. For those who like a challenge, this is the ideal course to be sexy and work the entire body, especially the upper arm area.
Other students in the course smiled and swung with glee, being able to show off their progression and strength after weeks in the course. Three days later and I still grimace while brushing my hair, but as co-owner, Kerry Knee stated, "no pain no gain."
And as painful as the course was, it was twice as much fun so I wasn’t intimidated. The friendly atmosphere helps too. Sesinyi recognized me in the second class two days later and came in smiling with a big hug. Christine ended her course the same way — with hugs, laughs and jokes for her students.
And although there were some advanced students intermingled with the beginners in [these classes], all three instructors were [equally] accommodating and encouraging to their students. The front desk attendees are genuinely nice too, treating students more like buddies than clients.
About Flirty Girl Fitness founders
Flirty Girl Fitness was created by Canadian sisters Kerry and Krista Knee after Kerry saw an episode of “Oprah” with “Desperate Housewives” Teri Hatcher dancing at a sexy workout class. Kerry realized there were no courses like that anywhere but in California. With Kerry’s business savvy and Krista’s natural athleticism and ability to quickly learn how to do pole tricks, their new business was born.
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