Women at this Toronto gym are performing astonishing acts of strength
A new gym in Toronto is posting videos of women performing mind-blowing feats of strength to their social media, and they're drawing major eyeballs.
Enhergy (as in, en-"HER"-gy) started out as a brand founded by Ottillia Giralico, who's been a personal trainer for the past six years, during lockdown. While transitioning to running workout sessions virtually, she launched Enhergy as an online business selling workout accessories.
However, Giralico was itching to get back to personal training in person, and in November 2020 secured a physical gym space for Enhergy, which officially opened in August 2021 at 39 Milford Avenue. Since then, they've had over 170 class bookings and have amassed thousands of social media followers.
"Enhergy is a brand I created to help women feel strong, confident, and empowered," Giralico tells blogTO. "I went with my gut feeling to pursue it."
Giralico envisions the gym as a major shift in the Toronto fitness scene, and once she secured the space she invited all the strong women personal trainers she knew to join her team. Enhergy is intended to be a safe space for women that's up to par with co-ed gyms.
"From years of being in the gym as a woman, I always knew how intimidating and uncomfortable it could feel sometimes walking into a gym full of men, or even just walking into the weightlifting section which would usually be predominately male," says Giralico.
Not only are all the trainers at Enhergy women, they also all typically have a brand or business of their own that the club tries to highlight.
This is another difference from most gyms, where Giralico found that kind of self-promotion was encouraged. She's using it to her advantage: altogether, her team has a social media audience that amounts to hundreds of thousands of followers.
"The women that you see in our video posts are all of the amazing trainers on our team," says Giralico.
"Each of them have their own fitness specialities, and they all offer a different piece to our puzzle. All of the women on our team are women of colour, or women who are part of visible minority groups. We also have three mothers on our team, who are able to juggle work, training, and a full time family."
One of the moms is also the social media manager at the gym, with her own small business that helps enhance the online presence of local small businesses, so it should come as no surprise Enhergy posts such attention-grabbing videos to their accounts, the comments sections filled with fire emojis.
Enhergy's social media videos of the trainers, which occasionally appear to defy the laws of physics, are meant to show off the strength of women as well as the way they train at the gym and the services they offer.
"The response from our videos has been overwhelmingly positive. We have received so much support from other women who mention that they love the concept of Club Enhergy, and they love the space itself when they come visit," says Giralico.
"We want every woman to feel as strong on the outside, as she is on the inside. It is our mission to uplift women, and to help them acknowledge their own strength and capabilities."
Specialties and interests of the all-women team of trainers at the gym include personal training, group fitness training, corrective exercise for pain-free workouts, Muay Thai, boxing, strength training, mental wellness, and only if you should so desire, weight loss.
Classes offered include options like group training, bootcamps, weightlifting, cardio-based step aerobic classes, and "Reggae Fit," a curated fitness class mixed with dancehall moves and techniques. Prices for individual classes tend to start around $25 or $30.
The gym also hosts events to bring women together around subjects like fitness and financial freedom.
Of course, Giralico warns that the acts performed in lots of their videos are for advanced fitness professionals only and are not recommended for everyone.
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