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In POUND class, you drum your way to fitness

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The Globe’s David Filipov tries a “Pound” workout class.
The Globe's David Filipov tries a "Pound" workout class.

People like drumming because it's fun. They like drumming because it's therapeutic. Drumming means you get to hit things that don't hit back.

And then there's this: If you're drumming to the catchy rock beat of Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" while doing squats for the entire three minutes and 41 seconds of the song, you might not notice the searing pain in your quads and glutes.

That, anyway, is the theory behind POUND, a fitness fad that's sprung up in Boston. It's a high-intensity, full-body, 50-minute workout that combines interval training, squats, lunges, plyometrics, and pilates with drumming — lots of drumming — with sticks that are heavier than average drumsticks.

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"It's loud, it's crazy, it's raw. It's rawwwwwwwwwww," said Annie Cole, 62, a veteran fitness instructor who started teaching POUND in March. "People work out so hard they don't realize it."

And people apparently love it so much they can't get enough of it. The five classes offered at the Parkway Community YMCA in West Roxbury, where a Globe reporter joined Cole's session last week, are constantly full.

"The music is so infectious and has a lot of beat," said Sheryll Strohl-Hammett, a participant who declined to give her age but says she has "five decades" of dance training. "The drumsticks get your mind off of how hard you're working your abs and your back and your legs."

Annie Cole led a POUND class at the West Roxbury YMCA.Barry Chin

Well, sort of. Drumming along with "Shipping Up To Boston" to Cole's whoops and yells of encouragement kind of distracted the reporter from the unnatural act of balancing on your butt while doing ab crunches without letting your feet touch the ground. But he knew the whole time how hard he was working, especially when the chorus kicked in and Cole exhorted the class to do the crunches, and drum, double time.

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Cole said it gets easier once your hip flexors get used to the exercise. Mercifully, that iconic Dropkick Murphys anthem runs less than three minutes. But the next song kicked in immediately, and with it, a new round of drumming and exertion.

POUND was created by Cristina Peerenboom and Kirsten Potenza, Los Angeles drummers and fitness enthusiasts who hit upon its potential for a full-body workout in 2010, when Peerenboom's drum stool broke and she practiced for an hour while squatting. The two worked out an exercise routine that incorporated an average of 15,000 whacks. POUND gradually made its way east; a search of the Boston area on the POUND site reveals 30 classes at 16 venues.

The drumming forces you to use your whole body, and makes it hard to cheat on the exercises. If you can’t reach the floor with your Ripstix — the quarter-pound, neon-green sticks used in POUND — you’re not doing a full squat, or lunge, or crunch.

"It's also a way to maybe release some stress because you pound," said Kelly Salisbury, director of operations at the Parkway Y, which has been adding classes to meet the demand for POUND.

Cole, who has seen a lot of fads come and go over three decades as a fitness instructor, said she thinks POUND will stick around.

"A lot of people like drumming, they like rhythm, they like tapping, and they don't really have access to that kind of activity in their lives," she said. "This makes it available to pretty much everybody."

But can pretty much anyone pick it up?

Yes, said Peg Sawyer, 68, who had never done POUND before it came to the Parkway Y, but breezed through the class last week.

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"My sons would be pretty embarrassed if they saw me, I think, because I kind of get down with it. That's the spirit of POUND," she said. "Just feel the music, and do things you don't normally do."


David Filipov can be reached at David.Filipov@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davidfilipov.