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Hoo-rah! Legions sign up for fitness boot camps
A militaristic approach to fitness training

Marta Gold, Canwest News Service
Published: Thursday, January 17, 2008

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EDMONTON - With the start of a new year comes the perennial search for a fitness boost, or, for a growing number of people, a fitness boot. As in boot camp.

They first infiltrated Edmonton back in 2004, when Soldiers of Fitness started its boot camp led by real army reservists. But the past year has seen rival platoons joining the war on sloth, taking the boot-camp model farther from its military roots. Now there's Bikini Boot Camp and Defining Eve's Bridal Boot Camp. Survivor Boot Camp focuses more on a mix of circuit training and outdoor exercise, without the militaristic edge.

The competition from so many rival camps doesn't seem to have hurt Soldiers of Fitness. Its program has spread to locations across the country. In Edmonton, they've seen participation grow from about 30 per month to up to 150 per month in the spring and summer, says co-founder Colin Reid.

"We already have army-sized strength going on. I joke around that there's more people training with us in the morning than there is at our actual military unit," says Reid, an army reservist who served as a peacekeeper in Bosnia along with business partner Karth Sahadevan.

The newcomers seem to be faring well, too, proof of the booming interest in boot-camp-style programs.

Allison Conroy, who heads the Survivor Boot Camp, says its popularity has surprised even her. So many people signed up for boot camp this summer, she was leading four different groups each week. She just recently gave up her part-time day job as a social worker to devote herself full-time to boot camp and has hired additional staff. While their styles, approaches and techniques vary, most boot camps offer three or five classes a week for between four and six weeks.

The boot camp concept appeals to people because it's intense and effective, says lifestyle and fitness coach Allan Fine, who runs Adventure Boot Camps in Calgary. It's cheaper than hiring a personal trainer and is less intimidating for many people than one-on-one training. And with regular workouts three or five times a week, people see results, he adds.

"When you have a [boot camp] trainer working with you, there's no guesswork involved," says Fine. Many people don't know where to begin if left to work out on their own. Nor do they have the motivation to continue without the support of others.