Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Tamara Brown (in pink), Jackie Williams and Jordan Ronning pray in Roy Jackson's "Devotion in Motion" class at the Family YMCA in Roanoke. The beginning of the class is prayer followed by an intense ab workout.

For my last column of the summer, I chose to take a group exercise class that seemed the most far-out yet. "Devotion in Motion: Come Get Your Worship On!" promised a 30-minute abdominal workout with a side of spiritual enlightenment. We'd be doing crunches and praising Christ, all in one sitting.

I was raised Presbyterian, but simultaneously praying and exercising was never part of the worship routine. But I decided to take a leap of faith and give it a chance. There were six other people in my class at the Family Center YMCA, ranging from a middle school-aged boy to a grandmother. Before class, a buff "Devotion in Motion" regular warned me about what I was getting myself into. "You're in for a spiritual awakening, but maybe a rude awakening, too," she said. "This class is really hard." Great.

Ms. Fit says...

• Class: Devotion in Motion
• Description: 30 minutes of exercise with gospel music and prayer
• Where: Family Center YMCA, Roanoke
• Cost: Free for members, $15 for nonmembers
• Sweat factor: 3 out of 5
• Fun factor: 3 out of 5
• Estimated calories burned: 150
• Final verdict: If you're looking for a way to combine worship and workout and don't mind abdominal pain and public praying, check out Devotion in Motion. Following 10 minutes of prayer, you'll work your abs for 20 minutes straight.

Our instructor put on a slow, soulful gospel song as soon as we all got situated. I wasn't expecting him to say "ready, set, pray!," and for a few minutes I wasn't sure if the class had actually started or not.

I took a cue from my classmates, all of whom had their eyes closed. Some lay on the floor, some sat with legs crossed, but everyone looked deep in meditation. I sat on the tattered purple Styrofoam mat and buried my face in my hands. I made a good faith effort to pray. But I just couldn't get into it.

So, like a child in a scary movie, I put my hands over my eyes, peeking out between my fingers to make sure the class wasn't moving on without me. Suddenly, after 10 minutes, the sound of blaring hip hop music pierced the silence. The music sounded just like what you'd hear in an urban nightclub, but instead of rapping about rims and women, these guys were rapping about Jesus and salvation. The until-then peaceful instructor immediately transformed into a boot camp sergeant, ordering us to get on our balls for sit-ups. It was clear he wasn't messing around.

We moved to the floor for crunches, then back to the ball for oblique work. Within minutes I was sweating, and shaking, trying to smile as if it wasn't the first time I had done an ab workout in recent memory. I went into the class thinking that because it was religious-based, it would be easy, or at least a place where I wouldn't be judged for my weak abs -- quite the contrary. Whenever I got lazy for even a second, the instructor would rush over and yell at me to keep going. We progressed to planks and 20 painful pushups on the ball.

Eventually we moved on to bicycles, a move where you pull one leg toward your body and touch your opposite elbow to your knee. My instructor counted to 30 while we did this, but his count seemed eternally slow. During this particular exercise, a song about suffering started playing. Though I don't think the music was intended to parallel Jesus' struggles with mine, I found it to be quite fitting. Couldn't we just go back to praying?

The abs workout only lasted 20 minutes, though, and before I knew it we were done. I don't think I had a spiritual awakening, but my classmate was partly right in saying I might have a rude one. Frankly, "Devotion in Motion" was the best ab workout I've ever had.

Over the course of this summer, I discovered that I really had no reason to fear group exercise at all. I had a great, fun workout in all of the classes I participated in. I'm still not completely over my phobia of mirrored walls, but I guess we all have our cross to bear.