Want to look slick in your spacesuit when NASA sends civilians to Mars?

Suit up in lululemon and find a space at the barre for Bar Method’s mix of yoga, Pilates and ballet. Long and lean muscle is built through small, low-impact strengthening movements that work the whole body. We knew it roused sleeping quads when we left our first class with wonderfully wobbly legs. Its location on Beatty Street is spacious and serene, with two studios softly carpeted and a lovely locker room with all the fixings to primp for the rest of your day.

I’m your Venus.

Bar Method, 837 Beatty St., Vancouver, 604-681-6188, http://vancouver.barmethod.com/

Joseph Pilates’ first clients were soldiers and ballerinas in need of rehabilitation. Technically we’re neither, but warring it out on the dance floor this weekend left us stiff and strained.

To get mobility back and feel balanced again, book a Pilates session at Gastown Physio & Pilates. Certified instructors offer private or duet sessions in a bright, brick room equipped with two top-of-the-line Reformers and and a clever piece of equipment that improves core strength, posture and balance called the CoreAlign, the first of its kind in Canada.

Lengthen then lavender latte (Café Medina is right next door) and you’ll be right as Kain.

From $75/60 minutes at Gastown Physio & Pilates, 306-560 Beatty St., Vancouver, 604-569-3891, www.gastownphysiopilates.com

In preparation for what’s called “seasonal lethargy,” bears put on 30 pounds of body fat a week. Heading into our own hibernation, the only bulk we care to 'bear' is chunky knitwear.

Keep the tush toned with a twice-weekly September session of Booty Camp. Located across the Lower Mainland, the girl only classes are lead by certified trainers and include fitness assessment and nutritional support on top of cardio and strength building circuit training. And enrollment comes a exercise DVD for doing on off-days.


We just finished four weeks and feel fit to bare arms beneath fall’s faux fur vests.

Camps ($159/4wks) start today and tomorrow in Yaletown, Fairview and North Vancouver, to sign-up visit www.bootycampfitness.com

Girls just wanna have fun, but when their gym kit makes them look like Little Miss Sunshine, you can bet they won't be turning cartwheels.

There's no sitting on the sidelines with Lilikiks, a Vancouver-based girls activewear line that has just launched its online store.

With on-trend colours, super-soft fabrics, and high-end technical detailing, styles like these will take them from tennis to track and back again.

She shoots, she scores!

Shop by sport or by style at their new e-store.

www.lilikiks.com

If you treat bikini season like a test (with dread and lots of cramming), then we’ve got the study group for you.

Shape up starts by enrolling in Survivor Bootcamp. The four-week intensives offer two, three or five day a week routine outdoor grinds in Canadian cities. Lead by very motivating instructors, they combine cardio and circuit training for trimming down and toning up. We’ll testify that they’re no walk in the park, but yield serious results.

And the high we had afterward felt better than scoring an A+.

From $190, find a location and sign-up at www.survivorbootcamp.com

If your mountain biking regimen includes a pre-ride prayer asking whoever’s up there to help you make it down in one piece, the Trek Dirt Series is your saviour.

Learn an entire season’s worth of skills (from basic climbing to riding down drops) and bond with fellow mountain bikers at the all-women two-day weekend camps ($315). Participants are split into groups according to experience so no need to fret if you’re still working on the basics. The camps also include bike maintenance clinics, fit workshops and social time to talk shop and show off your new skills.

The first Canadian camp runs May 15 and 16 in North Vancouver followed by May 29 and 30 in Whistler, July 10 and 11 in Calgary and August 21 and 22 in Canmore. For a complete schedule go to www.dirtseries.com

The Village People recently revealed that they wrote their 1978 hit “Y.M.C.A” in Vancouver, and after getting a private tour of the renovated downtown location, we think they should release a reprise singing its new praises. Herewith, ten reason to play at the new YMCA:

1. While the space retained its cool historical exterior, there’s nothing dated about the open, light-filled interior of windows and glass.

2. You don’t have to be a member to enjoy the Licious café (which also offers nutritional counseling and food delivery) and quiet meditation room on the ground floor.

3. Five different change rooms, including one just for families, with card-access lockers large enough to fit your moped helmet and a machine to ring all the water out of your bathing suit in 10 seconds.

4. Its Membership Plus service, which offers separate adult-only change rooms with towel service, Aveda products, lounge with internet and TV, and private sauna and hot tub.

5. The 25-yard pool with a movable floor that is UV filtered (no green hair!) and kept warm using reclaimed heat from the building.

6. Fitness classes like yoga, spin, personal training and even stroller-baby boot camp for moms and tots to take together.

7. Two rooftop playgrounds for the wee ones with a view of the 1910 church building next door that the kids have already dubbed “Hogwarts.”  With licensed daycare and child-minding services, your muggle can play there while you work or workout.

8. An outfitted, open concept kitchen and meeting area upstairs that will offer cooking classes by Vancouver chefs or can be rented out for that family reunion you don’t have room for.

9. Full gymnasium, racquetball/squash courts and 70 cardio and strengthening machines.

10. The fact that one very affordable monthly fee (from $43) gets you access.

Robert Lee YMCA (opens Monday, May 3, 2010), 955 Burrard St., Vancouver, 604-689-9622, www.vanymca.org/centres/robertlee

To our chagrin, walking a mile in ballerina shoes won’t get you the lean, strong bod of one.

But getting us closer to the barre they’ve set is the Dailey Method. Developed by San Franciscan Jill Dailey, it combines ballet, Pilates and yoga to lengthen, strengthen and tone the whole body (in other words, we worked muscles we never knew we had).

Certified instructors and sisters Karen and Jey Wyder are set to open a private studio in Vancouver soon, but until then you can join in on their regular sessions at the Centre for Peace or try a complimentary class at Lululemon locations this month.

For class info visit the Forum, call 604-290-3238 or email vancouver@thedaileymethod.com.

www.thedaileymethod.com

The Flow Yoga studio at Burrard and Smithe has a new lotus on life.

Partnering with YYoga, the new centre has stretched out from its former 1,800 square feet to six times the size. Offering 150 classes every week from Anusara to Yin (and even a yoga-spinning class called YRide), the  green-designed space, now named Flow Wellness, also offers services like massage therapy, chiropractic care and acupuncture to work out your other kinks.

Add in a tea lounge (pictured), health food bar, infrared sauna and eco-boutique, and our downward dog is happiest downtown.

Flow Wellness, 888 Burrard St., Vancouver, 604-682-3569, www.yyoga.ca

We like our workouts like we like our mini skirts—short and sweet. And new gym in town PowerVibe is letting us skimp on fabric, but not results.

The cleanly-designed space under the Granville bridge centres around a piece of equipment called the Power Plate, a vibrating machine that stimulates reflexive muscle actions and boasts the likes of Sting and Hilary Swank as fans.

But instead of leaving you to fumble with the strange apparatus, the gym gives seven-person, 25-minute classes, led by a very attentive and motivating trainer. A fitness fad? Our skepticism quelled when for days after our session we felt quad muscles we never knew we had.

Follow the class up with a 30-minute session in one of their personal-sized infrared saunas to prolong the calorie burn, oust toxins and reduce post-workout stiffness, and you really will be putting your best leg forward.

PowerVibe, 638 Kinghorne Mews, Vancouver, 604-687-8423, www.powervibe.ca for rates.