Cry Uncle! It's Fore-max!

By Margie Goldsmith

Cry Uncle

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, I say to myself as Steve Heller, exercise physiologist, fitness director, and creator of Fore-Max, a killer workout at The Westin Kierland Resort & Spa in Scottsdale, Arizona, grasps my ankle and pushes my heel closer to my butt. Granted, he’s only trying to loosen my hip flexor, but he’s lucky my leg doesn’t kick him in the face. My quads are screaming and I am ready to cry UNCLE! I must have missed the fine print, consenting to be tortured when I signed up for this 1.5-hour cross-training-meets-intervals class. This is the toughest workout I’ve ever tried, bar none, much harder than doing a triathlon or running a marathon.

Steve Heller is slim, in his thirties, with movie-star good looks, and an encouraging tone, but underneath is a pit bull who does not let go of an opportunity to help you stretch just a millimeter further and hold a pose a nanosecond longer all in an effort to make you faster, stronger, and more flexible. Twelve years ago, Heller developed Fore-Max at the Westin Kierland to help golfers prevent injuries, strengthen, tone, and increase their flexibility and endurance. The class became so popular that he now teaches Fore-Max five times a day, drawing some of the country’s top golf pros, a major league baseball pitcher, and weekend warriors. Eight-five percent of those who take it are locals and the others are hotel guests, like me.

The workout is an intense combination of squats, lunges, push-ups, crab walks, spiders, either using your own body as resistance or with medicine balls, straps, and physioballs. Another component are incline treadmill sprints, which are mainly why I’ve come: I want to run faster, injury-free. As a weekend warrior who doesn’t do enough stretching or weights, I’ve had just about every injury possible from shin splints to hamstring attachment injuries, Plantar Fascistis to Morton’s Neuroma.

I kneel and pull my arms backwards 25 times, as directed. “Lengthen your spine and keep your abs tight,” he says, then turns to the guy next to me, so I take a little break, thinking he’s not looking. He must have eyes in the back of his head because he says, “Hey, did you finish those already?”

Next I have to raise my pelvis and lift my legs to the ceiling, 100 times followed by 100 crunches with a 4-pound medicine ball raised over my head. After, we move into the gym where the weight machines and treadmills reside, including the infamous Woodway, a super high-speed treadmill that goes up to 25 miles an hour and has twice the incline of an ordinary treadmill. But before he puts me on the Woodway, he has me do lunges back and forth across the length of the room, twice. I get on the treadmill, which he turns it up quickly to 7, then 8, and finally 10 oh my God! My lungs are gasping, my legs are churning, I’m moving so fast I think I might black out. “Good, just a little more,” he says. “Get out of your comfort zone.”

Comfort zone? I haven’t seen my comfort zone since before this class began! I finally jump off and suck on air. It’s not over. Another two sets of lunges, then more treadmill sprints, this time even faster. Afterward, I criss-cross the room in a new combination of a walking Downward Dog and pushups. Then, another round on the treadmill. “Okay,” he says as I stagger off. Now what impossible thing will he make me do?

“Great job. You’re done.”

“It’s over?” I did it?

“You did awesome. Go get your smoothie.”

Giddy with joy, I slurp the fresh fruit smoothie included free with every Fore-Max class, and then enter the Agave Spa for the “Fore-Max Massage” I’ve booked. As Lynne, the masseuse, presses on my trigger points and releases all the soreness, I let out a huge sigh of joy. Yes, this was for sure the hardest class I’ve ever done in my life and I can’t wait to do it again.

For more information on Fore-Max at the Westin Kierland Resort & Spa or to order a DVD of this workout, call 480-624-1511 or visit For Fore-Max photos