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My Orangetheory experience

April 3, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Paula Brown

For the better part of a decade, my workout space has been a mostly empty room in the basement of my family home.

With free online classes and my small collection of equipment – a handful

of free weights, a yoga mat, and one ancient treadmill – my need to step foot into a gym has been limited to non-existent.

While the system worked for years, more and more I began to struggle with consistency in my fitness regime. I was working out on my own, with no one else but myself to push me to try harder.

So, when the offer to take a month-long trial of Orangetheory classes in Orangeville landed in the email box of my editor, I jumped onto the assignment in the hopes of reinvigorating my fitness experience.  

For those who have never done an in-depth search into Orangetheory, it is basically a total-body group workout that utilizes rowing machines, treadmills, free weights, and body weight equipment.

A big reminder is that the workouts are not high-intensity interval training (HIIT), but rather heart rate-based interval training, where you train through five heart rate zones. The five different heart rate zones are: resting (grey), easy (blue), challenging (green), uncomfortable (orange), and all out (red).

With a certified Orangetheory coach guiding you on when to push harder and when to pull back for recovery, the goal is to spend 12 minutes or more of the workout with your heart rate elevated in the “Orange Zone” to boost your metabolism, burn fat and burn more calories.

The aim of the heart rate zones is to “charge” your metabolism to encourage more caloric burn once the workout is done and to help better the results of your fitness goals.

Walking into that first class, with limited knowledge on what to expect was nerve-wracking, to say the least. But my gym fears were quickly eased by a walk-through tour of the studio, which is given to each Orangetheory beginner and guided by one of the coaches.

We discussed how the Orangetheory program works, the equipment used in the class, my fitness goals and before I knew it my feet were strapped into a rowing machine to start the 60-minute 2G class.

That first class was a burner, more than 600 calories to be exact, and I knew almost immediately walking out that I’d be back again.

I was drawn in by the atmosphere of the studio with its dark orange-hued lighting and pounding music as well as the adrenaline and competitive feeling I got from working out in a group setting.

During a month-long trial, I tested out three of the five available classes: Orange 60 Min 2G, Tread 50, and Strength 50 (lower).

For me, the most effective aspect of Orangetheory was the focus on class-to-class improvement rather than the end results of my fitness goals. At the end of each class, you receive a report called the OTbeatReport, which summarizes how you did that class. The report includes stats such as calories burned, average heart rate, the number of steps, and how often you move from each of the five heart-rate zones.

Having this information allowed me to compare each workout and see how I was improving from each class, and to apply it in real-time while doing a class.

For anyone just starting their workout journey or looking to add a community aspect to working out, I would highly recommend joining Orangetheory.

Orangeville-Shelburne Orangetheory is located at 225 Centennial Road in Orangeville and is open Monday-Friday from 5:15 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday-Sunday from 8:15 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.

To learn more about the classes available at Orangetheory visit www.orangetheory.com or contact that Orangeville-Shelburne location by phone at 519-513-0499.

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