Name: Liz Varga
Age: 48
Height: 5-foot-8
Weight: 125
Feats of strength: Varga was lucky if she could do 10 push-ups when she was in her 20s. Now, thanks to high-intensity training, she can do 40 push-ups in a row. (Tamara Beckwith/NY Post)
Name: Mailyn Raymundo
Age: 30
Height: 5-foot-3
Weight: 112
Feats of strength: Raymundo can squat 140 pounds, leg-press 550 pounds and dead-lift 100 pounds. (Tamara Beckwith/NY Post)
When 24-year-old Alex Rhea was studying at Rutgers University, the dance major wore a size zero and her hipbones jutted out of her bikini bottoms.
The reed-thin former vegetarian would spend seven hours in the studio before heading to the gym to sweat it out on cardio equipment such as the elliptical machine and StairMaster for an additional 60 minutes.
It was a grueling regimen.
But, four years later, the Hoboken resident has undergone a stunning physical transformation, going up three pant sizes and packing on at least 20 pounds — of pure muscle.
And Rhea couldn’t be happier.
“I now have a feminine, toned figure. I realized that I looked childlike for a while. Now I look healthy,” says Rhea.
Her secret? A high-intensity, Pilates-based workout with weighted bungees at Chaise23, a Flatiron studio owned by fitness guru Lauren Piskin.
On the advice of a friend, Rhea started working out there more than a year ago. She was instantly hooked — and decided to give up her dream of dancing professionally to become a Chaise23 instructor.
“I thought [my former cardio workout] was making me stronger. In actuality, it made me much thinner and weaker. Looking back, I was probably just worried about staying fit and keeping my weight down,” she recalls, shaking her head.
Rhea isn’t alone in her fitness reversal.
In a city where thinness is close to godliness, women are jumping off the endless cycle of cardio machines and skipping the delicate ballet barre in favor of kettle-bell weights and weighted bungees used in high-intensity intervals, otherwise known as high-intensity training or HIT. Such classes emphasize bursts of cardio and weight-lifting circuits, resulting in a toned, lean, sinewy look — and increased physical power. Even Jennifer Aniston strengthened her yoga routine (and her body) by adding resistance bands to prep for her stripper role in her latest movie, “We’re the Millers.”
“The aesthetic is changing,” says Donna Cyrus, senior vice president of programming at Crunch gyms. “Long and lean muscles are the new attractive — not the waif.”
Cyrus says there has been a decrease in the popularity of yoga at the gym and an increased demand for their strength and cardio burst classes.
The New York Sports Clubs have even added UXF training zones, where members pull weighted sleds, lift tires and work with pulleys.
And perhaps more telling is that uptown — where the official sport is staying slender — ladies are flocking to boutique boot camps such as the Refine Method and the Fhitting Room (the unusual spelling is a nod to its HIT philosophy).
“There’s a lot more women who think having cut arms and cut shoulders and defined muscles is super hot,” says Kari Saitowitz, the Fhitting Room founder. The Harvard Business School grad became a HIT convert after she ditched mindless cardio about six years ago to take classes with cross-fit trainer Eric Salvador — achieving the flat stomach she had always coveted.
In March, she and Salvador teamed up to open the Fhitting Room, where pretty blondes with patrician noses can be seen doing squats with heavy kettle-bell weights. The gym touts small classes akin to one-on-one training sessions.
“But more than the superficial stuff, I am strong,” says the petite Saitowitz, who carried her sleeping 60-pound son down two flights of subway stairs after a Yankee game last week.
One of her devoted clients is Liz Varga, a 48-year-old stay-at-home mom of two and former model.
“When I was younger, I always thought skinny was good. I never had definition in my arms. I was very weak,” says Varga, who now has enviable guns and the chiseled abs to match.
“I personally like the fact that I can go to Fairway and carry seven bags of groceries home by myself and don’t even think twice [about it],” adds the Upper East Side resident.
After years of yoga and cardio sessions, Varga switched to a more strenuous workout at a traditional gym, but soon hit a fitness plateau.
“I was looking for something on the next level,” says Varga, now a regular at the Fhitting Room, where she recently kept up with a man lifting 15-pound dumbbells.
“I did the same workout as he did, and I’m a nearly 50-year-old female. Plus, you burn calories more efficiently. I eat gobs of almond butter and whatever I want.”
Over at Refine Method, which has locations on both the Upper West and Upper East sides, founder and former ballet dancer Brynn Jinnett has developed a high-intensity program with circuits of resistance. She believes a ballet body is achieved by training like an athlete.
Jinnett says her reluctant uptown clients have been wooed by word of mouth from fellow ladies who lunch.
“We started to get more moms, more clients in their 40s, who are venturing into the studio, whereas we used to skew younger,” says Jinnett, whose clients include interior designer CeCe Barfield Thompson and socialite Jamie Tisch.
“A few weeks ago, I had a former client who showed up for her first class right after a blow dry,” recalls Jinnett. “She looked scared and said she hadn’t worn sneakers in 15 years. At the end of class, she walked out and said, ‘I can’t believe it’s taken me three years to get here.’”
But not all converts opt for fancy classes and custom contraptions.
Brazil-raised jewelry designer Mailyn Raymundo, 30, does oldfashioned, hard-core weight lifting to achieve a toned butt and her prized cut legs.
In fact, she recently injured her knee and, much to her chagrin, lost weight.
“I am 112 right now, but I am happiest at 117 pounds. I like to feel strong, not weak,” says Raymundo, who lives in Chelsea.
Unlike women who strive for the “thigh gap,” the space between the inner thighs sported by Victoria’s Secret models, Raymundo was “freaked out” when her thighs stopped touching, because it meant a loss of muscle tone.
During her workout with a trainer, the petite powerhouse squats about 140 pounds, does 550 pounds on the leg press and can dead-lift 100 pounds.
But, strength and health benefits aside, the Brazilian stunner says women can catch more male attention if they hit the weights: “I talk to my guy friends, and they like girls with butts and with more of a body. Girls want to be skinny for other girls.”
kfleming@nypost.com