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The Most Bizarre Workout Classes

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Forget the treadmill — the gyms making headlines in 2015 have you crawling like a lion or sweating it out in six-inch heels.

TheThings’ video “10 Unique Workouts To Get In Shape” rounds up the boutique fitness classes ditching the standard bench-press-and-elliptical routine for something closer to performance art. Think primal crawl conditioning, stiletto cardio, and workouts that put you on a suspended hammock or a paddleboard instead of a yoga mat. The common thread: novelty is now a selling point, not a gimmick.

• Animal movement classes — primal fitness, quadrupedal movement, and primal crawl conditioning — have participants mimicking bear crawls and ape-style locomotion instead of running on a treadmill.
• High-heel dance fitness studios build entire cardio and core sessions performed in stilettos, marketed specifically for improving posture, balance, and calf tone.
• Boutique novelty formats like Punk Rope, AntiGravity aerial suspension yoga, and board-based or aquatic cross-training round out the trend of studios chasing engagement over routine.

Crawling Instead of Running

Primal fitness and quadrupedal movement classes strip exercise down to something almost pre-gym: hands and feet on the floor, hips low, moving the way animals actually move. Instructors frame primal crawl conditioning as functional training that hits the shoulders, core, and hips simultaneously, without a single machine involved. It’s low-tech by design — the whole appeal is that there’s nothing to plug in, and the burn comes purely from controlling your own bodyweight across the floor.

Cardio in Stilettos

High-heel fitness classes have carved out their own niche by keeping the workout format familiar — dance-based cardio and core drills — while changing the footwear entirely. Studios pitch the heels as a built-in balance and posture challenge, arguing that staying upright and moving through choreography in stilettos forces the calves and stabilizer muscles to work overtime compared to sneakers on flat ground.

The pitch from boutique studios is simple: if the workout feels like the gym, people quit; if it feels like something they’d never tried, they come back for the next class.

The Novelty Boom, By the Numbers

This isn’t just a handful of quirky studios chasing Instagram attention — by 2015, fitness industry tracking from groups like the American College of Sports Medicine had already flagged boutique, novelty-driven classes as a defined growth segment. Bodyweight interval training and functional movement still anchored most people’s baseline routines, but ACSM’s surveys showed a clear appetite for niche formats specifically built to fight workout fatigue and keep group classes feeling fresh rather than repetitive.

That demand is exactly why Punk Rope classes (jump-rope drills dressed up with music and game-style intervals), AntiGravity aerial suspension yoga (inverted poses in silk hammocks), and indoor aquatic or board-based cross-training sessions have found paying audiences willing to book recurring slots. Anyone who’s already tackled an endurance stunt like working out for 24 hours straight knows the appeal of a format that breaks up monotony — these studios are just packaging that same instinct into a 45-minute class.

Studios Maintain Investment in Eccentric Content

The economics are straightforward: a novelty class is easier to market than “spin, but on Tuesday.” AntiGravity aerial yoga studios can charge premium drop-in rates precisely because the hammock setup isn’t something a member can replicate at home, and animal-movement studios lean on the same logic — you need a coach cueing the crawl patterns, not just a mirror. It’s the same crowd-pulling instinct behind stunts like the world’s largest challenge videos: give people something they can’t just do alone in their living room, and they’ll show up in person.

None of these formats are replacing squats and deadlifts anytime soon, and the video makes that plain — ACSM’s own data still has functional strength work as the backbone of most programs. But for studios trying to fill a Tuesday 6 p.m. slot, a class where you crawl like a primate or dance in heels for 45 minutes is doing exactly what it’s designed to do: getting people back through the door for the next session.