When instructor and fitness entrepreneur Kara Simmons walks into the group fitness room at Clyde Recreation Center, she’s carrying more than a set of dumbbells. She’s carrying a philosophy: strength training should be accessible, energizing, and — perhaps most surprisingly — fun.
Simmons teaches Upbeat Lift, a choreographed strength-training class that pairs traditional muscle-building exercises with the driving rhythm of popular music.
“Upbeat Lift is a strength training class, so we are lifting weights and the goal is building muscle,” she said. “It’s choreographed to music, so we’re moving to the beat of the music. When we do a bicep curl, it’s like we’re going to the beat of the song.”
The class uses simple equipment — dumbbells, a mat, and either a resistance band or exercise ball — all of which are provided at Clyde Rec and the new EOS Fitness in Springville, where Simmons also teaches. For newcomers, the lack of required gear is part of the appeal. No showing up with a bag full of unfamiliar equipment, and no wandering a crowded weight room trying to figure out who’s using what.
“It’s really like a welcoming place for everybody,” Simmons said. “Typically, 6 a.m. is crowded. so you have to watch out for who’s using what equipment to see what you can use for your workout. In the group fitness room, we have all this equipment provided to us, and you have the instructor telling you ‘We are working on our biceps now. This is the move that we’re going to do.’”
Upbeat Lift didn’t appear overnight. It grew out of Simmons’ earlier work as a co-creator of Upbeat Bar, a barre-inspired program she launched in 2020 with three other instructors. They noticed there were barriers preventing people from accessing barre workouts unless they belonged to boutique studios with specialized spaces.
“We wanted to bring the accessibility of the bar workout to group fitness,” Simmons explained. “There really wasn’t anything out there that matched the way that we wanted to teach our classes.”
The team created choreography, built certification programs, and quickly saw success with instructors. As that momentum grew, they started noticing a similar need in the strength-training world. Many people wanted to lift weights, but felt uncertain, overwhelmed, or out of place on the gym floor. And so in 2023, Upbeat Lift was born. Soon after came Upbeat Pilates, expanding the family of choreographed formats designed to blend effective training with an energizing atmosphere.
Across all three programs, the structure remains the same: exercises set to popular music spanning decades and genres, with intentional progressions that take participants from song to song without breaking momentum.
“We have a whole variety of music that we offer for our participants,” Simmons said. “And we have specific muscle groups that we’re working on.”
While Simmons loves creating choreography and fine-tuning class structures, her real passion is the people who walk through the door. “I love empowering others,” she says without hesitation. “When people are coming to Upbeat Lift, they primarily want to get stronger. They want to be able to build muscle. And I love being able to teach them that.”
One thing Simmons is adamant about is that Upbeat Lift isn’t just for one type of person.
“I want the 18-year-old person who’s just graduated high school,” she says. “And I want (someone like) my mom, who is 70 years old, who has been taking group fitness classes forever, to be included in that same workout.”
The class is designed so that different fitness levels can work side by side. Participants choose their weights, adjust their range of motion, and find their own challenge within the choreography.
“They might have different goals,” she said. “My mother might not be wanting to build muscle, but she wants to keep her muscles activated and she wants to keep them strong instead of letting her muscles deteriorate. So you might have different goals walking in, and that’s why we really want this to be for every single person that walks in.”
Simmons knows that many people don’t associate strength training with enjoyment, but she loves watching them change their minds.
“People think lifting weights can’t be fun or moving their body can’t be fun when you’re exercising,” she said. “So we have found that moving to the beat of the music is so motivating. And when you’re doing that with a group as well, your body creates these endorphins. You want to move to the music, and it also helps you work harder because you’re pushing to that beat.”
That’s the core of what keeps Simmons teaching: creating a welcoming environment where people can build strength, confidence, and community — one beat at a time.
