BARRY’S BOOT CAMP: Demi Moore in G.I. Jane had nothing on Barry Stich, who’s been teaching his arduous classes out of his eponymous West Hollywood studio for the past six years. Chris Noth, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Jenny McCarthy, Jason Biggs and Carrie-Ann Moss are just a sample of the folks who have submitted their bodies to Barry’s hour-long combination cardio-weight classes. “Weights and cardio are broken up into 30 minutes apiece – it could mean 30 minutes of cardio, followed by 30 minutes of weights or it could mean five minutes on the treadmill, five with weights, five on the treadmill and so on,” Stich says with far more energy than someone who teaches 20 of those classes a week should have. (He employs 10 other teachers.) Gluttons for punishment join the Academy, which means a commitment to attend five days a week for the entire month. And precautions are taken to punish flakes: Each Academy participant is assigned an “accountability partner” who has to run the stairs in front of the studio 10 times if his or her partner opts to not show. Though other boot camps exist, most of them are outdoors, which Stich feels is both limiting and possibly isolating: “If you’re outdoors and you fall behind, you’re all alone walking up that hill,” he remarks. “In this, you can take your treadmill to walk.” Stich, a former “awkward, skinny runt,” admits that his classes tend to go far beyond the normal person’s idea of exercise. “It’s the insanity end of working out,” he admits. “You’re being pushed further than your mind was going to let you go.”
