A new model for the fitness world

by Sandra Miller
Back Bay Sun
Helena Collins admits to having a big ego. She's so sure that once you come into her studio and take a class, you'll be back.
"I've been in this industry forever," says Collins, 44, who just opened Life in Synergy on Boylston Street last week. In 26 years, she has run many gyms, and she also knows the super fitness centers that automatically withdraw $49.95 a month from your bank account is betting that you don't even show up.
"I think my industry is completely responsible for making people fat," she declares, pointing out the trendy exercise machines you see advertised on TV, as used by models who starve themselves and work out three times a day. "You go to that gym, and you see that $49.95 come out of your checking every month, and maybe the place is too intimidating, and you don't go, and your self-esteem goes down..."
Her health center is about as big as many other gyms, at 5,000 square feet, but the difference is that it's filled with 5 trainers at the studio and 30 class instructors, who "are filled with people like me who are dying to get you into shape."
In fact, she's so sure you'll be back, she only sells her classes individually for $15 or in 10-packs for $120. "If we're not good, we don't make money. It makes the people who work for me think about fitness and education. It's a completely different model."
With the first class, the instructors don't want to be your friend, they want to check your alignment, see where your strengths and weaknesses are. They look at your body holistically, taking into account nutrition, how you breathe, your stress. "People think it's about what did I eat or did I work out. It could be about learning some breathing exercises that you do for two minutes a day, so at the end of the week you aren't so exhausted."
And unlike some gyms that emphasize the need to work out five days a week, Collins says her studio has clients who work out only two days a week and still look great. "You align your body, you can just be. You don't have to stress out."
Collins has had many years in the field to figure this out.
She was an asthmatic who took up swimming to improve her health and swam competitively while growing up in Long Island, but when she discovered the gym she stayed on dry land. "I was in incredible shape," she said, but then began feeling a sore back, a knee that hurt, and noticed that the instructors would just say, "do this exercise. They wouldn't explain what led to the pain."
That's what led her to study what she calls macromuscular synergy, to tailor a workout to an individual, rather than have a whole class follow a routine that works for her particular body. "If a watch is off, it may keep ticking, but you'll lose time," she says. "That's what is happening with our bodies. To correct your engineering so you won't be in pain any more, that's the big journey for me."
She married a martial arts trainer, Brian, who taught her about Eastern philosophy, and she studied around the world, including acupuncture in China.
Collins has traveled around the world to study muscular science and movement, to create her Synergistics Fitness Method, which she teaches at her award-winning facility, Synergistics Personal Training Studio, which she opened in 1997 on Newbury Street.
Last week, she opened Life in Synergy Fitness Studio to bring her methods to a broader audience in class format. Students experience different types of movement, including yoga, salsa, Martial Arts, meditation, Zumba, House Dance, and pilates. "Things like Pilates are only a teeny, tiny part of Life in Synergy," she says. "I am a fitness geek, and I have to learn everything about it, the pluses, the minuses, the negatives, and improve upon it so I can tailor it to each person and do the best thing possible for them."
She has classes that focus on diabetes, women who under went a mastectomy, and other sessions that cater to a person's individual needs, she says.
While many of the people in the big gyms hire pretty and slim people whose bodies many would like to emulate, Collins says she hires her educators based on what she notices "from the neck up": they're smart, and they know that there's always more to learn. "Anyone who works on my team want to be educators," says Collins.
The instructors are not going to chat about their personal life, she says. "That may be fun, but it may not get you where you need to be. You need to be friendly but not friends, happy, no attitude, no -isms, no ifs. When you walk in the door, everyone is friendly. Then they would take you in front of the mirror, and say, 'This is what's wrong with your alignment.'"
"My goal this year is to really work to change the health of America. To bring what I teach to the public."
In her first week, 275 signed up, and for those who register online, they get the first class free. "I think once they see how clean it is, they see the quality, people will be back. I say, 'Book one session, you don't have to see me ever again.' The retention rate at health clubs is 40 percent. My retention rate is 98 percent."