By Ken Valenti
The night before Cori Adams was to begin teaching her first step class at the Westport Weston YMCA, she received a call that was a bit unnerving, but in a good way.
So many people had signed up – more than 30 – that the class would be moved to one of the large rooms. That was a surprise to the former fashion industry professional who had never anticipated teaching exercise classes before someone suggested it.
“I did the audition and the very next day they said, ‘You’re hired,’ and I said, ‘Oh my gosh, what did I just get myself into?’” she recalled recently.
Gold Step: Y’s most popular
That was two years ago, and her Gold Step classes have been a hit ever since. They fill up regularly with 40 students and a wait list that often stretches 20 names long, or more.
That makes it the most popular class at the Westport Weston Family YMCA, said Ashlee Grieb, the Y’s group fitness instructor. Other classes prove popular enough to develop wait lists, but more typically around 10 names long.
“It’s an amazing workout … When you’re done you are very sweaty, you’ve been working hard,” Grieb said of Adams’s class. But, she added, “It’s more than a workout class. It’s not just (Adams) but the culture she has created in there. Everyone there is friendly to everyone else.”
RISE + STEP
On Sept. 7, Adams will take a leap to a larger venue when she brings her high-energy workout to the Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater in Bridgeport. There, she will lead a class of 100 or more people in what she and Westport-based promoter Peter Van Heerden call RISE + STEP: Amphitheatre Edition. They also have added on another Westport fitness leader, Sarah Sadie Newett, to start off the event with a 30-minute stretch and movement session.
Part of the attraction to Adams’s classes may be the resurgence of step aerobics, a workout style from the late 1980s and the 1990s that brings to mind images of leg warmers and Jane Fonda workout videos.
Health and lifestyle magazines have been heralding the return of step aerobics over the past couple of years. But the exercise form has evolved. When Adams runs the class, it doesn’t feel retro, Grieb said.
“It’s definitely a modern take on step aerobics,” she said.
Welcoming
Then there’s Adams’s uber-friendly, community-building persona. She focuses on an upbeat, welcoming atmosphere.
“I never want to set an intimidating setting,” Adams said. When new people come, “I make sure they feel really welcome, and I show them a few of the routines right away.”
Everybody gets a hug
Just ask Deborah Garcia, a devoted Gold Step class member for two years who shows up 20 minutes early to be sure to get her spot. For the 64-year-old caregiver, taking exercise classes is one way of doing something for herself, and Adams’s class is her favorite by far.
“Everybody gets a hug in the morning,” Garcia said. “She is there for everybody. She just loves everybody.”
The workout fans’ ages range from young mothers with their teenage daughters to senior citizens. One class member recently celebrated her 80th birthday, Grieb said. About 80 percent of the class members are women, Adams said.
Social time
Many of the class members use the minutes before the class to socialize. Those who come at the last minute know that the workout is starting when they hear “The Business” by Tiesto. What follows is a mix of songs by artists that can include Bjork, The Prodigy, The Killers, Missy Eliot and Fatboy Slim.
Adams, whose family moved to Westport when she was 3 years old, developed a love of fitness as a girl. Those Jane Fonda videos? Adams became a fan at 7.
“Anything I could get my hands on, I would do at home,” she said. “I was just really into it when I was a kid.”
Westport-bred
As a teen, she and her father would take walks around Westport that went on for miles. Along the way, Adams would find a step, maybe at the train station, and practice the exercises “to get some extra legwork.”
When she was 23, she moved to New York, living first in Manhattan, then in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, before moving back to Westport 12 years ago.
“Now that I’m here, I honestly can’t see myself anywhere else,” she said.
Growing footprint
For years she worked in the fashion industry, most recently as senior vice president of sales and marketing at Welden Bags. The company, like many other businesses, became a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic. When it closed, Adams stopped working and became a “full-time mom” to her daughters, now 12 and 7 years old. The suggestion that she start leading exercise classes “came out of nowhere.”
But it is expanding. Three months ago, she also began leading the class at Halo Fitness in New Canaan.
With tickets to the Bridgeport event selling quickly, Adams plans to do more grand-scale classes.
“This is the first of many,” she said. “We definitely want this to be a kick-off.”
Ken Valenti
A career journalist and lifelong resident of the New York City region, Ken Valenti has enjoyed decades of reporting local, regional and national news in New York and Connecticut. Topics of special interest are development, the environment, Long Island Sound and transportation. When not reporting, he’s always on the lookout for the perfect coffee shop or used book sale.
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