Give a name to your workout!

There's more to a name than you think. Ask fitness experts and you'll get the picture. Where in the past if you wanted to rid yourself of those jiggly thunder thighs, you went for a mundane muscle-toning workout, there is now the sassily-named Skinny Jeans workout.

Or if your derriere is one that has a life of its own, the experts have for you now, the carefully christened Brutal Butt workout. And for those who can never quite equate exercise with pleasure, psst...go try the Big O or the Coregasm.

Ask Wanitha Ashok, ex-Miss India finalist and fitness trainer what the whole idea behind these names is, and she pipes, "The idea is to beat boredom and sustain interest. It makes people look forward to work-out hour. I recently started a Pilates Butt workout which hit an instant chord with my clients." Backing her up is fitness freak Nina Reddy, owner of a popular fitness centre, "It is important to have innovative names. You can't just say 'workout' and expect people to be enthusiastic about it. Ordinary never sells. Think about it, as opposed to saying, 'I am going for an aerobics class,' wouldn't it be a lot cooler if you were to say, 'I am going for body combat class?'"

And the fitness enthusiasts...well, they seem to be lapping up the nomenclature and looking for more! Says student Sekar Reddy, "It all boils down to the cool factor. It's also a psychological thing. It's fun to say that you have a body attack class to attend to in the evening. I find that classes which have innovative names are a lot more interactive and engaging." Agreeing with him is fitness manager Pravin Ashok, "We have workouts like Pink Express, Cross-Country and Express Core which sound exactly as energetic and fast-paced as they really are. Curiosity levels are very high and we plan to introduce more such routines with great names!"

So, how exactly do the workouts acquire these appellations? Ashok replies, "A lot goes into the name. You need to hit the target audience bang on. So, the experts brainstorm to come up with suitable options." While Wanitha says, "Creativity is a must. Change is everything; for example, even fitness experts these days are called body transformation experts. You need to intelligently incorporate the gist of the workout in the name." So while the Red Hot Salsa workout has students twisting to fiery Mediterranean beats, the Cine Magic has popular soundtracks of films playing in the background.

But don't be fooled into thinking routines with innovative names are all play and no work. Dancer Kokila concludes by saying, "We recently had a dance-workout called the Karmic Jazz workout. The name generated a lot of curiosity and people flocked in. But the workout, which is a power-packed combination of kalaripayattu and jazz proved to be too strenuous and many dropped out after the initial novelty of the name wore out!"