Michael Seewald
June 29, 2015 By Christian Murray
A new fitness center will soon be opening in Sunnyside that aims to get its members in shape through group training sessions.
CrossFit Sunnyside is expected to open in September and will be located at 47-01 Barnett Avenue where Magic Touch Auto has been located for years. The facility will be an affiliate of the more than 13,000 CrossFit gyms worldwide.
Michael Seewald, the owner of CrossFit Sunnyside, said that many people are attracted to CrossFit since the program not only involves fitness/strength but it also creates a sense of community. He said that there tends to be between 10 and 15 people per class and the members form a bond with one another.
“What happens is the people in each class get to know one another and share in the struggle to get fit,” he said. People then encourage one another and help make sure that their peers keep going to classes, he added.
“It’s different from a big box gym where you typically don’t know the person beside you– where it is more of a solo, impersonal experience.”
He said that CrossFit is a combination of strength training and general fitness and that people of all different shapes and sizes can be in the same class.
Athletes tend to lift bigger weights during a session or do more pull-ups than people who have just started or are a little out of shape. The classes involve running, rowing, pull ups, jumping rope, squats and other exercises.
He said that more women are doing CrossFit than men these days because they like the sense of community and tend to join classes together.
Seewald, who lives in Astoria, said he started doing CrossFit when he was 41 after he got out of shape working in the corporate world. “I was a high school and college athlete and like most of us I just stopped being active.”
“I would sign up for the gym and would stop going after a few months,” he said.
He started doing CrossFit in Long Island City and shed 35 pounds. Five years later he is opening CrossFit Sunnyside.
The standard CrossFit gym, he said, has a little over 150 members. His aim is to have 50 people signed up by the time he opens.
He said that CrossFit also focuses on diet and he will be encouraging members to move toward a Paleo way of eating which involves, in part, the avoidance of refined sugars.
He plans to hold free sessions on Saturdays at Lou Lodati Park until he opens.
For more information, please click here.
Location: 47-01 Barnett Ave.
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31 Comments
Is there an update on the progress for this place?
CrossShit forging elitist mediocrity. Where bad form is the norm ™.
Can we close the damn afterhours joint next door now? Attracts the same element that the billiards did
Time to petition JVB to make Barnett one-way street! It’s time already! How could that street be two way, I never could understand. Maybe we should make 46th two way street too, what do you think!?
I really don’t care what it’s about as long as someone is petitioning JVB.
Gib me pulse or Gib me death
I will jog there so I’m loosened up when the exercise class begins. I’m already excited!
Where the heck am I going to park when I get to crossfit?
In front of other people’s houses blocking the driveways of all those garages, etc. C’mon. What’s a madder wit you?
Very cool! A great addition to the neighborhood.
only 2,200 for a 1 bdrm!?? Sunnyside is a bargain, NOW i can afford cross fit!
what? barnett ave is gonna be da new hotspot! The new 220 unit complex and now this. the should open Paradise should open back up
Looking forward to it!
Cross fit uses the streets and sidewalks as part of the training program be care full of when they do a run on sidewalks in a group they will mow you down they actually had to close up shop in a residential area of long beach LI
maybe if you weren’t so damn fat there would be more place on the sidewalk
Once again- NEGATIVITY all around. Come ON! Seriously…….GET A GRIP. I wouldn’t be too concerned with being ‘mowed down’.
Bring on new life, new businesses, new faces, new ENERGY- and hopefully all of you NEGATIVE old grumps will get pushed out of here!!!!
Your arguments would be more effective if you adopted an attitude of respect toward the people whose neighborhood you want to change so materially. Instead, you use an aggressive name and write contemptuously about every concern they voice. It isn’t a good way to win friends and influence people.
When Pulse gym was in operation the members parked their cars all over the blocks surrounding it. And they left sneaker boxes, sweaty T-shirts, empty bottles and cans of energy drinks and garbage in that line everywhere. So sorry for the people who live near there. I hope it isn’t 24 hours, anyway. Pulse was. Good for exercisers, bad for neighbors.
Would you rather see a nightclub at that location????! Nothing please some people
Actually, that’s not such a bad idea! Maybe it could be “Pulse: the gym” in day time and “Pulse: the club at night. I’d go there!
I hope it isn’t 24hrs either, although the other crappy gym kept that street busy, ever since that place and the drug-exchange billiards closed, the street turned into a deserted area, you wouldn’t want to walk there at night, but now things will change again, and for gods sake, MAKE THAT STREET ONE WAY ALREADY! My heart skips a beat every time I pass by there, the idiots drive like they own the road.
WTF happened to Magic Touch Auto?
I am also curious about that, but all for the best. I was hoping they would tear down all those buildings and make a nice park there, including the bar or pub or strip joint or whatever it is at the end of the street by 48th.
Conveniently located close to Sunnyside’s foremost fighting center, the Community Gardens on Barnett Avenue. I’m looking forward to starting on the 12 Week Mary Caulfield Don’t Take No Crap From Your Neighbors training program.
You are obsessed with her, aren’t you? They have pills for that now.
You seem to like my name a great deal. Again, Dana, I am eager to speak to you about web anonymity.
Dana, I’m sorry you didn’t call me. My offer remains open and I will repeat it every time I see you using my name in your anonymous posts. Thanks, all the best.
Another notch in the belt of Sunnyside becoming hipster friendly by catering to the latest exercise fad.
A lot of inexperienced people from the general populace try to jump into crossfit. It’s often very large group classes with 1 or 2 instructors trying to teach very advanced techniques.
A lot of instructors are simply bad. They barely know what the exercises are. So they can barely teach 1 person at a time, nevermind 20 at a time.
A big emphasis is placed on olympic lifts. And a big emphasis is played in using olympic lifts for high reps. Olympic lifts are highly technical and are generally never performed for more than 3 reps at any moderate or higher weight. It’s just stupid trying to turn such a lift into a cardio exercise. A recipe for inuries.
A lot of people try to jump 100% into crossfit, pretending they’re seasoned athletes and breaking down their bodies. Some people experience injuries. Some people even get rhabdomyolysis (ordinarily only commonly experienced by high level athletes when put under extraordinary pressures of athleticism). However rhabdomyolysis is far more common in crossfit than any other sport.
I know Mike personally from crossfit dynamix. He’s very sharp and knows a lot about lifting form. No reason to doubt his success.
Crossfit might be the least-hipster form of exercise. Hipsters go to Yoga, Spin Class, or have personal trainers.
Sweet!!