I’ve been in my share of Ys, Jack LaLannes and hotel exercise rooms. Blend the best features of them all, and you have nothing — nothing! —compared to the Lake Nona Performance Club. I toured this place, which opens August 1, 2021, on a whim when media was invited. Let’s just say I’d give up my beloved Peloton app in seconds if I lived closer.
A calm aura pervades the Chopra Mind-Body Zone at the Lake Nona Performance Club.
Let’s get the basics out of the way: The Lake Nona Performance Club is a newly built three-story structure that approaches wellness innovatively within its 130,000 square feet. It has all the weights and stationery bikes you’d expect, yet that feels almost auxiliary. The “medically based” facility has a physician as Medical Director. A Medical Advisory Council is comprised of 35 professionals, most of them physicians. Nutritionists, rehab specialists, teachers and trainers are on staff. It’s an educated staff, with bachelors, masters and doctorate degrees aplenty. All together, they offer services for lay folks who want to exercise as well as people with post-surgical pain and chronic diseases, a desire to learn about wellness, athletes and wannabes. Inclusiveness is built into the design so everyone will feel comfortable.
The Lake Nona Performance Club is owned 50-50 by the Tavistock folks, who are behind the entire Lake Nona neighborhood of Orlando, and Akron, Ohio-based integrated Wellness Partners, which operates the facility.
Members get the most perks out of the Lake Nona Performance Club. Enrollment and membership aren’t cheap, but you can get good deals right now and then take classes and use the machines all you want every day. Still, the rest of us can get into select facilities and programs; in fact, LNPC may become a destination for select medical tourism services over time. When the Lake Nona Wave Hotel opens across the street in winter, the club will offer partnership programs for hotel guests. And that hotel? It bills itself as , “The most technologically advanced hotel in the world.”
Storage areas and equipment are located outside yoga, Pilates and Barre rooms, making it easy for guest to find equipment and staffers to clean it.
Here are random extraordinary features of the Lake Nona Performance Club. Please understand that these photos do the place no justice. I just snapped them while contractors were finishing up. Visit the Lake Nona Performance Club website for a better idea of what’s inside.
Anyone can go rock climbing
The Rox Climbing Gym is open to the public. Within 75,000 square feet, those who are certified can experience bouldering, rappelling and top-rope climbing on a 42-foot climbing tower. Fee-based.
At 43 feet, the TOX climbing and bouldering wall is the tallest in Central Florida.
Deepak Chopra is behind the yoga-meditation-Pilates area
Dr. Deepak Chopra is renowned for his leadership in all things New Age. At the Lake Nona Performance Club, the Chopra Mind-Body Zone is named for him. So, by the way, is the street on which the club is located (pending official approval). And, Chopra now lives in Lake Nona. The Chopra Mind-Body Zone, partnering with Chopra Global, has rooms for yoga, mediation, Pilates (with Reformer equipment), and ballet and barre. In addition to familiar classes such as slow flow and hot yoga, this 5,500 square feet section of the Lake Nona Performance Club offers wall, floating and aerial yoga, some of which is good for people who can’t exercise on the floor, such as those with knee issues or spinal stenosis. Lake Nona Performance Club is the only fitness center in the world with a Chopra-partnered fitness and wellness center. Bonus: The changing areas include large private family rooms that are located in neither the men’s or women’s areas.
A meditation room inside the Chopra Mind-Body Zone at the Lake Nona Performance Club. Ignore the bags in the left corner. Set-up was still in progress.
Take a special class if you have a medical issue
That team of Medical Advisory Council gurus created exercise programs specifically for patients with certain issues. If you live in the community and are dealing with diabetes, cancer, heart disease or chronic pain, a doctor’s medical release will get you access to the “performance script programs.” The staff will measure outcomes and report back to the physicians.
The zero-entry family pool is always at 82F to 84F. And it’s fun.
The childcare area will have germ-removing technology
Not that sticky little fingers don’t spread germs, but the club is taking action. Its Child Watch area, for kids 2 to 12 within 3,500 square feet, has lighting products in the ceiling that destroy viruses floating in the air. Essentially they're air filters integrated into 2-foot-by-2-foot ceiling grids. They pull in the air and emit an ultraviolet wave that destroys coronaviruses and others.
Viruses are removed from the air in real time in the Child Watch area.
You can ride a bike underwater
Swim laps in the six-lane, 25-meter lap pool, watch the kids frolic in a children’s pool, or exercise seriously in a warm-water pool that is handicap accessible. Attendants at the Aquatics Center’s Therapy Pool will bring underwater nonmotorized treadmills and bicycles into the water when appropriate. The equipment is helpful for people who can’t comfortably exercise in traditional ways.
The therapy pool is 88F and accommodates underwater treadmills and bicycles.
The glass is flexible, color-wise
Assorted pieces of brand new exercise equipment. See those windows? They’re View Smart panels that get darker and lighter as needed.
The light, bright Lake Nona Performance Center has many windows. Every pane of glass can have its tint controlled, so it can let in loads of light, none or some.
You can get the ultimate body analysis
While regular exercise areas are for club members, the Human Performance Lab sells its services retail. The crux is DARI Motion, a gizmo that uses “motion capture” technology to help analyze how a body moves, where it’s imbalanced and where there are deficiencies. Then, under the direction of a PhD, the staff creates programs to help a person get stronger, more flexible, more mobile, etc. In this area, you can also get biomechanic assessment, performance nutrition, standard performance blood analysis, muscle sound, sport psychology/mental coaching and distance coaching.
This may look rudimentary, but it’s actually a high-tech system for examining your entire body and how it moves.
The parking garage has a clever little secret
The multilevel garage across the street is striking with verticle bars in various colors dotting the exterior. As it turns out, those colored bars represent the DNA sequence of a Valencia orange.
The parking garage. Those colorful panels represent the DNA of a Valencia orange.
Other elements of the Lake Nona Performance Club
You’ll find these:
A 1/12-mile track with sections for walking and running
More than 100 exercise classes a week including Zumba, Barre, Body Combat, Body Pump, Cycle & Flow, Boot Camp, mat Pilates, Aqua Fit, Tai Ch and Qi Gong
An indoor gym for pickleball, volleyball, basketball and badminton
150 pieces of state-of-the-art exercise equipment
Suites for acupuncture and massage therapy
Virtual exercise programs via a custom app
An InCLubGolf training center with simulation bays
A spa will open in the future and will be open to non-members
A 5,900-square-foot indoor turf field
A six-story medical plaza will open next door in 2022
The cycling room
Saturday, July 31 is your chance to take a peek. That’s when the grand opening will be held, so you’ll be allowed in without being a member. Expect raffle prizes, kid games and one-day-only membership discounts. The official opening day is August 1, 2021.
Turf, plus walking and running tracks