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ZombieFit helps exercisers fight undead — sort of

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By Cornelius Frolik, Staff Writer 5:22 PM Saturday, October 30, 2010

The inability to fit into a pair of jeans is incentive enough for some people to get off the couch and start training to become physically fit.

But others need a different, more hair-raising motivation.

A new fitness program, ZombieFit, provides participants with one of most unique reasons to learn the routines: In the event of a zombie apocalypse, where corpses rise from their graves and seek humans to devour, participants will be trained in the art of escape and survival.

The program’s motto is, “Fitness for the apocalypse.”

To be sure, ZombieFit is half kidding.

The training is really designed to provide participants with “functional fitness” that will help them in any and all everyday situations, most of which have nothing to do with escaping the undead, said Rich Gatz, the program’s 29-year-old founder.

Also, no one dresses up as zombies for the workouts; standard exercise clothing is fine.

But Gatz, a 2003 graduate of Ohio State University but who now lives in the Chicago area, said ZombieFit certainly improves participants’ awareness of their surroundings and ability to effectively move through them, which would be useful in the event of Z-Day or the Dawn of the Dead.

“You prepare for the impossible. You’ll be ready for the improbable,” Gatz said.

Like a virus that turns people to undead monsters, ZombieFit’s popularity is spreading across the country and the globe, thanks in part to the attention garnered by its science-fictional name.

Catherine Hardin, 20, of Kettering, said she and her friends discovered the program after a celebrity from the sci-fi popular culture universe wrote about it on Twitter.

Hardin and her friends were instantly smitten.

Within weeks, Hardin was traveling to Carillon Historical Park and elsewhere in the Kettering area to perform pull-ups on tree branches and climb over benches.

She said its functional fitness philosophy really connected with her.

“I don’t need to be able to run a marathon today, or any of that stuff, but I kind of want to be able to do whatever I want,” Hardin said. “It’s a tall order, but if I just want to jump up on this or that thing, I want to be able to do it.”

ZombieFit incorporates many basic elements of parkour, which is the activity of French origins wherein people maneuver and negotiate urban and rural environments with speed, efficiency and precision.

In parkour, the world becomes the gymnasium, and participants scale walls, hop from rail to rail and leap over benches and other outdoor fixtures.

ZombieFit focuses on metabolic conditioning and anaerobic exercises. Its routines are high-intensity and emphasize full-body movements.

Hardin and several friends visited the ZombieFit website and wrote down the workouts of the day. They started performing ZombieFit routines about three times a week.

Aside from developing more confidence and agility, Hardin said she is better equipped for the physical demands of the everyday.

“I am not a balanced person — I’ve sprained my ankles countless times in my life,” she said. “Part of my interest in functional fitness was because I wanted to stop freaking spraining my ankle.”

Hardin’s friend, Jason Schachter, 28, a computer programmer who lived in Centerville until August, when he moved to San Luis Obispo, Calif., said he finds the idea of needing to outrun and outmaneuver the undead amusing and somewhat motivational.

“Are you going to be able to run far enough? Are you going to be able to get out of their way? Are you going to be able to climb in three seconds while they are coming at you?” he said.

But Schachter said the real appeal of ZombieFit is that it has helped him gain the energy and endurance he needs to keep up with his daughter while playing tag and other games.

Schachter and Hardin said they have come to view the physical world a different way now that they have spent some time with ZombieFit.

Curbs, park benches, rails, stairs, tree branches and walls are seen as obstacles that are awaiting to be overcome.

They don’t even need to be chased by flesh-eating corpses to test their ability to put their precision, strength and balance skills to the test.

“It’s great. You can get started today. You don’t have to have a gym, or barbells or special tools,” Hardin said.

For more information, visit zombiefit.org.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-0749 or cfrolik@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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