Zombies as exercise motivation
St. Charles' Zombiefit classes don't really have the undead, but do use parkour and other techniques to whip students into shape.
June 24, 2010|By Pat Dunnigan, Special to the Tribune
St. Charles bills itself as a place that "bursts with naturally charming adventures" where paddlewheel boats cruise the Fox River and pedestrians stroll safely through leafy parks.
So why are residents of the area drawn to a fitness course designed to improve their chances of survival in the event of a zombie invasion?
Rich Gatz, the 28-year-old lawyer who founded Zombiefit in October, says the program, which is built around the practice of parkour, attracts people because of its focus on "functional fitness." Parkour enthusiasts practice running, vaulting and climbing an obstacle course of structures found in an ordinary urban landscape.
"Nobody actually comes to class because they really believe in zombies," Gatz said.
But Gatz isn't taking any chances. "If you're ready for the zombie apocalypse, you're ready for anything," he said.
And so, two nights a week in a gymnastics studio in St. Charles, five to a dozen people gather to run, jump, climb and vault up, over and around obstacles that stand in for the features of a city in the grip of a zombie infestation. They also undergo strength and conditioning training because zombies are relentless.
There are no actual zombies or zombie stand-ins, though Gatz says they are invoked for inspiration. A precision jump, for example, requires participants to land in an exact location, much as they would have to do if fleeing a zombie from rooftop to rooftop.
"You've got to land that, or the zombies are going to get you," Gatz tells students.
Gatz says he and partners Jeff Strening and Jesse Randall didn't go into the fitness business with any particular expertise in zombies. The idea, he says, sprang from a discussion in which something was said about being in the kind of shape where you'd be "unstoppable, ready for anything, even zombies."
But as word of the program spreads like an out-of-control virus, the zombie element is threatening to take over. There is no place to hide. Everyone, it seems, wants to talk to Gatz about zombies.
At times, his weariness comes through and he sighs like a man who has just spent a sleepless night barricaded in an abandoned building surrounded by the ravenous undead.
"Aren't zombies kind of slow?" asks a reporter. "Why the sprints?"
There is, says Gatz, a debate on that point, of which he was blissfully ignorant before Zombiefit. He would rather talk about the distinction between anaerobic and aerobic workouts. But it turns out there may be different types of zombies, fast and slow.
"In a hypothetical zombie apocalypse, you want to be as ready as you can," he says.
But for a place only hypothetically infested with zombies, the area has had its share of zombie-related happenings.
In 2008, an old farmhouse west of Illinois Highway 47 was the scene of a horrifying standoff between a young woman and a mob of zombies intent on devouring her.
Geneva filmmaker Jose Carlos Gomez, who witnessed the scene in the course of shooting his film "Bled White," says the area provided more than a zombie-conducive setting for his movie..
"When I put out an ad asking for zombie extras," he says, "most of my zombies came from St. Charles."
Police in St. Charles had little to say about the possibility of zombie activity.
"No comment," said spokesman Paul McCurtain. The mayor declined to be interviewed.
But at least one expert says the city's natural landscape and proximity to a major population center are textbook zombie bait.
"Imagine you roll yourself in honey and lie next to an anthill," said Max Brooks, a Los Angeles writer whose 2003 "The Zombie Survival Guide" launched his career as a zombie defense consultant.
Brooks' latest work, "World War Z," recently garnered him an invitation to speak at a book club on the campus of the U.S. Naval War College in Rhode Island.
Brooks says St. Charles residents would be wise to prepare. But he is not quite ready to endorse Zombiefit.
"Parkour would probably work better against vampires," he says. "Vampires are the wall climbers. Zombies are the shamblers. To get away from zombies, you want to do something more like power walking."
But Gatz says his students will be ready.
"Take some of my athletes against readers of the book, and I bet they will do pretty well for themselves," he said.
They won't be the only ones without a plan. At the St. Charles Convention and Visitors Bureau, Executive Director Amy Egolf would not be caught dead unprepared.
"From a tourism standpoint ... if I find it's burgeoning and they're willing to spend the night in our hotels," she said. "We'd be delighted."
