More Than A Gym

The Wellness Center and CrossFit Iron Pelican

WE ARE MORE THAN A GYM. WE ARE A COMMUNITY. WE work with you in personal training, nutrition coaching, and mind and body wellness. We walk alongside you in your health and fitness journey, ready to share in your successes, as well as address any concerns or roadblocks. We absolutely love what we do here at The Wellness Center. As the saying goes, “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.”

We understand that nothing is more frustrating for new gym-goers than trying to figure out what to do at the gym, which is why we offer three FREE TRAINING SESSIONS for all new members! Our desire is to get you started in the right direction, because as we all know, knowledge is power. Our fit staff is highly qualified and trained on every piece of equipment and eagerly wants to pass that knowledge on to you. We want you to fully experience our gym’s culture, member services, and have the confidence you need to achieve success.

THE WELLNESS CENTER is the premier fitness facility in Northeast Louisiana and features the area’s only indoor heated pool. With over 36,000 heated square feet, we give you fitness opportunities galore, literally a workout for everyone at every fitness level, skill, and preference. Showcasing 60+ fitness classes, a cardio theatre, an indoor heated pool, a fully equipped Women’s Only floor with Women’s Only classes, a Barefoot Yoga and Pilates Studio, a Jacuzzi and Steam room, an onsite massage therapist, an In-Body Analysis System, and a weight floor that dominates with three squat cages, two deadlift stations, and extensive free weights and dumbbells ranging up to 150lbs and coming soon to The Wellness Center: A cold plunge!

60+

Group Fitness Classes

From Boot Camp to Battle Ropes and all in between, we’ve got you covered in group fitness classes. Body Pump, led by long-time fitness instructor extraordinaire, Amy Moore, will get even the novice weightlifter’s blood flowing and metabolism rising. If you need to shake your booty, then head on to cardio hip hop taught by Lamont! Talk about game changer. A personal favorite, Body Combat, will have you feeling like Ronda Rousey in no time. (Deidra’s good like that.)

Nutrition Coaching

We absolutely attest to the fact that many health problems can be prevented and reversed by improved physical activity and proper nutrition. Our certified Nutrition and Fitness coach can get you on track with both. Coach Tara takes clients at the beginning of each month with non-members welcome. With one-on-one sessions and periodic check-ins, she creates a macro nutrition plan based on your goals: Gain muscle, lose fat, maintenance. Coach Tara is your accountability partner!

Personal Training

Do you need help establishing a fitness routine based on realistic goals? Our certified personal trainers have a wealth of knowledge specifically suited for you to achieve success and maintain that success. They create and implement safe and effective exercise programs for their clients.

Indoor Heated Pool

Whether you are a water enthusiast searching for a low impact aerobic workout or an athlete training for a triathlon, our indoor heated pool is the perfect choice for you! We offer several aqua fitness classes and have open lanes for lap swimming. You will not find a better indoor water fitness program in this area.

WOMEN’S ONLY FLOOR

Fully equipped with top-of-the-line equipment, free weights, kettlebells, medicine balls, and much more, the Women’s Only Floor is a huge draw! Don’t miss our extremely popular ladies circuit class on Mondays and Tuesdays led by Coach Obie Sims.

Barefoot Yoga And Pilates Studio

Nurture your mental and emotional well-being with our yoga and pilates classes for all fitness levels. A few we offer are yin yoga, yoga sweat, pilates, aerial yoga and tabata yoga. We offer private yoga and aerial yoga classes, too. These are great for birthday parties, team building, bachelorette parties, etc. and can be reserved by non-members as well!

Crossfit Iron Pelican

CrossFit Iron Pelican has L1 and L2 Coaches that lead every workout suitable for everyone. Varying workouts include strength, gymnastic, metabolic conditioning, and mobility. At CFIP, you get 2 gyms for the price of one. $105 per month and you get CROSSFIT plus The Wellness Center.

FREE CHILDCARE AND CHILDREN’S PROGRAMS

To make the fitness journey easier for our members, we provide free CHILDCARE in our Kid’s Korner for ages 6 months – 12 years. Special children’s programs throughout the year include KidsFit Camps, Aqua Stand-Up classes, our own 318 Triathlon, private and group swimming lessons, and family swim time on Saturdays from 1-3pm.

The Wellness Center welcomes the opportunity to help you meet your health and fitness goals. So come in, take a tour and let us get your family on the road to fitness! GET FIT WITH US. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @ wmwellnesscenter.

“Girl, Woman, Other”

by Bernardine Evaristo

Evaristo’s novel revolves around the lives of twelve black women in Europe. In a woven narrative of pasts and presents, mothers and daughters, friends and lovers, Evaristo’s chapters read like short stories connected via loose, yet strong, threads. If pressed to identify a primary character, Amma stands out, as the novel begins and ends with her play’s opening night in London, a big break after a lifetime of writing personally relevant, yet untold stories few cared to see. Amma’s daughter is Yazz, the result of a planned pregnancy with Amma’s gay friend Roland, a black scholar resentful of the “black” disclaimer attached to his work. Having grown up with feminist, radical, resentful of the status-quo parents, Yazz’s sporadic disdain for the ones who raised her manifests in a questioning of her parents’ commitment to social progress. The continuing chapters highlight tangential relationships - Yazz’s friends and teachers, Amma’s neighbors and lovers, the social and familial circles growing wider as the chapters multiply. While the women share black skin, their backgrounds and viewpoints and experiences diversify, showing the broad-brushed categorization of Other is as vapid as the category of Woman.

The writing is captivating in its complexity. Evaristo composes long sentences embedded with pithy, memeworthy phrases. I kept reading with my face, laughing out loud, biting my lip, furrowing my brow. I couldn’t predict the next plot point or even the next viewpoint character. As a writer, I admire craftsmanship. As a reader, I crave organization. I kept looking for an acquaintance tree of how all these people knew one another. The work explores privilege from a unique angle, the privilege acquired later in life and how combined with the reality of aging may temper one’s priorities and perspective. Often when I read fiction with a theme of Otherness, it is from one viewpoint, the Othered’s telling. The tapestry of Otherness that Evaristo provides in this novel projects outward in a sort of rejection of the definition and of labels in general.

If you appreciate a challenging, yet entertaining novel that begs reading again, this book will deliver.

Bernardine Evaristo is the author of 8 novels, with Girl, Woman, Other receiving the Booker Prize in 2019. The feminist, progressive novel questions both feminism and progressive ideals, highlighting the factions behind the labels we’ve rhetorically exhausted.

“Megan should have been grateful and accepted her cute status, what girl doesn’t want to be told how lovely she is, how special? Except it felt wrong, even at a young age. Something in her realized that her prettiness was supposed to make her compliant, and when she wasn’t, when she rebelled, she was letting down all those invested in her being adorable.”

REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE