A member masters forearm stands and barbell deadlifts with her Coach.
Most people prefer to kick-start their mornings in quiet solitude. But that’s not the case for Keri Kundert.
Once the pandemic eased up, the longtime Equinox Paramus member dropped into a high-energy group fitness class (usually with dance and barre pro Michael J. Clark) around 6 a.m. four days a week. It was a ritual that lifted her mentally and physically. “Just showing up there and being around everybody was so motivating,” says Keri. “I realized in all of those group classes that getting stronger just made me feel better, getting up early made me feel better. All these choices are what served me at the end of the day.”
Come spring of 2023, however, it was time for a change. Enter: Shelby Frantz, a Coach+ at the Club. The two were a perfect match for one-on-one personal training right from the get-go.
Thanks to her previous experience working at a physical therapy practice, Shelby was used to tweaking exercises to meet clients where they were at, whether they had joint instability or difficulty maintaining muscle mass, and help them reach their goals. This “problem-solving” background and know-how was key for Keri, who was born without the lower part of her left arm.
In those early-morning MetCon and Stronger classes, Keri had been relying solely on what she calls her “claw” — a pair of hooks attached to a strap that wraps around the arm. To perform deadlifts, for instance, she’d place a dumbbell in the cradle of the hooks, which got the job done but wasn’t ideal, says Keri. “I was always struggling,” she recalls. Then, Shelby brought the Aldridge Arm, a deadlift strap designed specifically for single-arm use, to the table. Although Keri still uses her claw to do TRX sled pulls and train at hotel gyms that lack barbells, the Aldridge Arm, along with the other tools the Coach+ has introduced, has been “life-changing,” she says.
“Meeting Shelby unlocked a whole other piece of [my fitness],” Keri says. “When I was [taking] Michael Clark’s [classes], I always just used my claw. I thought I'd never be able to barbell deadlift because the claw doesn’t [lengthen]…Now, I look forward to her programs.” The fact that Shelby also has a background in yoga only sealed the deal for Keri, who had been aspiring to perform a forearm stand.
In the months since, Keri and Shelby have met for regular training sessions, prepping the body for long winter days spent snowboarding, building confidence in new movements, and finally nailing the forearm stand, says the Coach+.
“Classes are great and they're fun, but, like, I'm dedicating time working with her on specific goals that I want,” adds Keri. “So when I go to work out, I'm like, ‘This is going to make me better at snowboarding. This is going to make me hit my forearm stand. This is going to just make me stronger overall in an area I'm lacking.’”
Here, the duo opens up about their progress over the last two years, the tools they’ve used to make those significant strides, and the fitness goals on the horizon.
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What goals did you initially set out to tackle?
Shelby: “The forearm stand was a big one. Keri knew she wanted to do it, and I knew she was close, but we had to take a different path than the typical progression. With most people with a forearm stand, you start with a dolphin, which is basically a downward dog on your forearms, and then you kick up into the wall and balance with the support of the wall.
“For Keri, for a couple of reasons, that was really, really hard. Just kicking, we couldn't get there. So we flipped it around and we started doing L shape: her forearms were on the ground and her feet were on the wall. We got really used to balancing there, and then we started to take the feet away from the wall and spotting from there. We were there for a long time, and it wasn't until the fall of [2024] that we got a kick-up — that was a big first goal.”
“As we approached the snowboard season [in 2023], I was like, ‘Let's program a whole series for you.’ Our goals broadened from just forearm stands and it got to be like, ‘Let's add some more pulling. Let's think about pull-ups. Let’s prep for snowboard season.’ Once we got there, then I started creating a full five-day program for her to work through.”
How have your workouts improved your performance on the slopes?
Keri: “I've snowboarded for six or seven years now, but it wasn't until last year that I learned about the importance of external rotation in your elbow when you're snowboarding. Because I don't have as much weight in my arm, I naturally always have an inward rotation. But with snowboarding, it's so important to have your elbow going outward, so you're going straight down the hill versus being on your toe side or your heel side. When you snowboard, you want to be right in the middle of a heel and a toe side.
“Working with Shelby made me a lot more conscious of my body, too. We used to use those [resistance] bands where I would keep turning my arm [out to the side] — that helped me just be more upright and stronger going down the hill. And that is obviously what you want when you're snowboarding — not being hunched over and just being aware. There were a lot of W and Y prone exercises, and that's what I'm kind of going into now because we're in the winter.
“All the forearm stand training has tremendously helped, as well. It’s crazy how everything kind of comes full circle. Whatever we're training for, there's always a mission in mind.”
Shelby: “That [internal rotation] was a deficit that we really found first in the forearm stand. In a forearm stand, you need to have both arms really stable, and because Keri’s left arm doesn't have the leverage of the forearm, it was flying out. We really needed to build some rotator cuff muscle to keep that left elbow really locked in place when she was going upside down.
“As we were working on that for her forearm stand, Keri went out to the mountains and came back and was like, ‘Oh, you know what, I really need it when I go downhill, too, to stabilize, to hold myself back onto the heels, to get away from the toe side, to be able to ride.’
“As we approach snowboard season, we’re doing a lot of side-to-side movements, because glute stability is what we need — that's really what steers, what drives the control. What's so great about having the Aldridge Arm is that it’s opened up that ability to load the hamstrings and the glutes much more. Because of the way Keri’s body had adapted, the quads were a lot stronger than the glutes, and so it made her ride much more on the toe side because the quads wanted to do all the work. And so being able to load back and open up that made that a lot stronger, and then it made her a lot more stable on the mountain.”
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How else have you used adaptive devices to progress toward those goals?
Keri: “When I do certain exercises, like in pull-ups or pull-downs, I'll use just one section of the Aldridge Arm, and the red piece will wrap around whatever I have to [grip]. There’s also my Dycem strip — this just helps a lot with getting the grip on the left side to hold everything in place.”
Shelby: “We also use the Dycem strip on the deadlift because the strap can slide. We use just the red strap when it's basically just replacing the hand and the forearm. When we need the weight to go back up through the shoulder, like in a deadlift, that's really when we're the full Aldridge Arm. It’s really developed for athletes who are missing the entire arm, but because it transfers the weight all the way up to the shoulder, it helps her pull a lot more strongly. Otherwise, we're limited by what the biceps can basically tolerate. So now we're able to lift much heavier, because the weight really can go all the way up to her shoulder girdle, as opposed to being limited by where the left arm ends.”
“Adding the Aldridge arm has really opened up a whole other door of symmetrical pulling — like the deadlift — and swings.”
What accomplishments are you most proud of?
Keri: “Oh, my forearm stand, for sure. I get hyper-fixated on things. When I want to do something, I'll dedicate — I'm at Equinox, like, every day at 5 a.m. When we were getting to the forearm stand, I would practice a full hour every single day just in the L shape, balancing. I really wanted to be able to get it, and that is definitely my proudest accomplishment to date.”
Shelby: “It's such an example of the broader concept of 'greasing the groove' — you're picking one movement that you're going to do really frequently, and you're just going to spend a lot of time with it. The forearm stand was such a good choice for that because Keri travels a lot, so it was something she could do while traveling, even if it was just the L shape. It was something she could always practice. She didn't need a ton of equipment for it, and it was something you could always do when you came in. Whatever else your program was doing, you were always practicing. I kept saying that it was a case of, ‘You need time upside down. Balance will come. You just need to spend time upside down and get used to it.’ It took a while, because it always takes longer than you want, but that really did work. That's just all her work — I did none of that.”
Keri: “She showed me the ropes. In this case, she led the horse to water, and I learned.”
What’s next for your training?
Shelby: “I haven’t done a deep dive on the adaptive options, but I think the last piece we're looking for is an equivalent to an adaptive device that will let us do big pushes and bench press. Something that's not a strap, but something that's going to let us push. I think finding the right fit for that is going to open up everything.
“Until then, we have turned a little bit more toward pushing and developing stability overhead. The more we build that now, if and when we get an adaptive device, it'll all be there. It’s the same thing as before we could even deadlift, we did a lot of other kinds of hamstring strengthening; we did glute drives, Nordic curls, various versions of squats, all these other things. We've done Zercher squats, where we’re loading with the bar in the elbows — so we were finding other ways to load. I think continuing to stay strong as we approach a real snowboard season, and then I think the next goal will be to really get a barbell bench press and those kinds of things.”
What has surprised you most about working with a Coach?
Keri: “[Previously, I thought] personal training was just like a Group Fitness class but one-on-one. And it really wasn't until I worked with Shelby that I learned it's way more than that. That's why I love why Equinox calls them coaches because it throws out the [stereotypical] trainer type. To me, it really is coaching you through your life.”
Photos by Jared Ryder