First, there was krumping, the spasmic, freestyle hip-hop dance out of South Central L.A. You probably weren’t much good at it. It went global anyway. You might have it confused with crunk. That’s hip-hop, too. Southern, thumping, also fast. Usher had a hit with it a few years back.

O.K. Now it’s time to krank. This is not hip-hop. But it’s going to be huge. To experience Kranking®, you’ll need a Krankcycle®, and, for the moment, one of the few places you can find one in New York is at the Reebok Sports Club/NY, on Columbus Avenue. Avery Washington offers introductory classes. Picture ten Krankcycles in a mirrored room—they’re stationary arm bikes, basically, with just a seat, a suspended front wheel, and hand-pedals where handlebars normally go. On a recent morning, half a dozen women were Kranking, hands whirling in front of them, while a mixtape of Danzel, Janet Jackson, and Miguel Migs pounded from Washington’s pink-shelled iPod. Washington, an extensively muscled man wearing a red bandanna, and a certified Kranking instructor, was chanting, “Left, synch it, a little faster, come on, this is where you get the cardio, nice and smooth, right on, nice transition, left and right, both arms working together.”

Why will Kranking be huge? Because, for a start, Johnny G invented it. The last fitness program he invented was Spinning® (stationary bicycling in a group, basically). Spinning went beyond platinum, worldwide, and Johnny G, né Goldberg, rode the craze, which is still going, for all it was worth. He registered every Spinning-related trademark you can think of, did a licensing deal with Schwinn, and then sold it all, along with the instructor-certification program (a hundred and fifty thousand instructors in eighty countries), in 2005. Kranking is his comeback.

“It will be a slowish rollout,” Johnny G said, on the phone from California. “We’ll be in forty countries by March. I’d love to have ninety thousand units out there in the next three, four years. Then we’d be helping a lot of people.”

Helping people is Johnny G’s not-so-secret mission. As he writes in “Kranking® Trainer Philosophy,” a brief essay for the Krankcycle Web site, “It is my wish that all teachers and students realize their importance as human beings and strive for health, peace, wisdom, and success.” Johnny G is fifty-one, a former endurance cyclist, and speaks with a South African accent. There was traffic roaring in the background. He was sitting, he said, on a dune overlooking the Pacific Coast Highway.

The inspiration for the Krankcycle hit him in 2002, at a fund-raiser for challenged athletes. “There were a couple of legless people and, at the foot of the stage, a fourteen-year-old kid with a homemade hand cycle,” he said. “He was tenacious. So I had a go, and was absolutely exhausted in ten minutes.” The next frontier in the fitness business, Johnny G realized, was the upper body. He spent several years, and more than half a million dollars, developing and refining the Krankcycle.

Who came up with the name?

“I did,” he said proudly. “Came up with the spelling myself. The universe blessed me.” He gave a big, unironic laugh.

Back to Kranking class. (Come on, synch it.) Although Avery Washington makes it look easy, Kranking is not yet pulling in the crowds at Reebok Sports Club/NY. It could be the superficial resemblance to some onerous early-industrial assembly-line task—the sort of hard, silly-looking repetition that used to destroy a worker’s body in six months. It looks, let’s admit it, masochistic. Washington tried to mix it up for his group—“stand up, come round front, add some resistance, bounce into it a little”—but he admitted that he might need to mix it up more. “I think I’ll add jump ropes next week,” he said.

During a break, an older woman, slightly wild-eyed, came over. “I’m knocking all the time,” she said. She was talking about having trouble getting the Krankcycle to turn smoothly. “It’s driving me nuts. I love it, but I’m so upset about the knocking.”

Washington said, “You need to be in synch or you get that knocking.” This could be another possible disincentive. Johnny G himself mentioned “dealing with the clunk of the krank arm.”

You will be good at Kranking. It won’t be like krumping. You will realize your importance as a human being, and Kranking will be key. Krankcycles, by the way, won’t be sold through infomercials. They will be available to chiropractors and physiotherapists, but primarily they will be integrated into your workout through the certified gym-instructor network that has helped make Spinning what it is.

That means Avery Washington. He mainly teaches Spinning and body sculpt, which is also known as definition. “Every place calls everything different,” he said evenly.

Kranking先是有了krumping，一种即兴的，痉挛似的hip-hop舞蹈，在洛杉矶中心南部兴起。你可能不太在行，不管怎样它都在全球流行起来了。有的人大概会把krumping跟旷课乐（crunk）搞混，两个都是街舞（hip hop）。Krumping是几年前由亚瑟小子发展出来的，在南部流传的也很快。

现在，我们来看看摇柄运动（kranking）吧。摇柄运动不是街舞，但一定会风靡。玩摇柄需要一辆摇柄车（krankcycle），而目前纽约只有很少地方能找到，其中一个是位于哥伦布大道上的“锐步运动俱乐部”（Reebok Sports Club)。艾利·华盛顿（Avery Washington)在那教授入门课程。他在一间带镜子的房子里放了十辆摇柄车。他们被固定在了地上，基本上只有一个车座，一个悬空的前轮，在通常是手柄的位置那有两个手压板。前几天早上有六个女学员在这做摇柄运动，伴着从华盛顿的粉色iPod里放出来的混合音乐（丹泽尔，珍妮·杰克逊和马圭尔·米格斯的混合音带），双手不停地在身前旋转。华盛顿有摇柄教练资格证，他肌肉结实，带着一块红色的丝质手帕，叫着口令：“左，跟上！快一点，加油！这样才能提高心肺功能，很好，很流畅，就这样，动作很漂亮，先左，再右，两只手一起动！”

为什么摇柄运动会流行起来呢？首先因为这是强尼G(Johnny G)发明出来的。他的上一个发明是动感单车（Spinning）健身项目（以组为基本单位，在原地骑自行车）。动感单车的热度在世界范围内超过了普拉提，强尼G（生于哥德堡）简直为之发狂，其狂热度至今不减，不过的确做什么都值得。他注册了所有能想到的跟“动感单车”有关的商标，并向思汶（Schwinn）申请了许可证，后来于2005年把这些都卖了，连同教练证书项目一起（包括80个国家的18万个教练）。现在他带着摇柄运动（kranking）又卷土重来了。

强尼G在从加州打来的电话上说：“这次推出的速度会比较慢，我们将在今年三月前打入40个国家。我想之后三、四年间在那些地方建起90万个单位。这将使很多人受益。”

强尼G从不隐瞒帮助别人是他的使命。他为“摇柄车网站”写过一篇短文，名为“摇柄运动教练哲学”，他在文章里说：“我希望所有的教员和学员都能明白他们身为人类的重要性，并努力追求健康，和平，智慧和成功。”强尼G现年51岁，曾是一名自行车运动员，说话带有南非口音。从电话里可以听到车辆呼啸的声音，他说他正坐在一座沙丘上，看着太平洋海岸公路。

强尼是在2002年产生开发摇柄车想法的，那时他正在一个残疾运动员的筹资人那里。他说：“那里有几个没腿的人，而台下一个14岁的小孩正骑着辆自制的手摇车。他很顽固，所以我就试了一下，坚持了十分钟就完全不行了。”强尼发现下一个有待开发的健身事业要从上半身入手。于是他花了几年时间和50多万美元来开发和改进手摇车。

不过这名字是谁想出来的呢？

“我想的，”强尼自豪地说，“我自己拼出来的，上天很眷顾我。”他爽朗地笑起来。

回来看看我们的摇柄课堂吧（加油，跟上节奏！）。虽然艾利·华盛顿让摇柄运动看起来很简单，还是没能为纽约锐步俱乐部吸引来大批学员。这项运动表面上看来就像一些早期工业时代繁重的装配线工作，又辛苦又蠢还不断重复，六个月就能把工人的身体拖垮。我们确实得承认做这运动有点像受虐狂。华盛顿试着让他的组员把这项运动跟其他运动混合起来做——“站起来，绕到前面，用点力，挤进去一点”——不过他说他可能得综合的再多一点：“我想下星期会把跳绳也加进来。”

休息的时候一位年长的女学员走过来，样子有点生气。她说她想让她的摇柄车转的顺一点却总遇到麻烦：“我总是撞到，都快疯了！我喜欢这项运动，但老是撞到弄的我很生气。”

华盛顿说：“除非你跟上节奏，不然就会撞到。”这是另一个可能会让人受挫的原因。强尼G说过要“跟上摇柄咯噔的声音”。

你能成为摇柄高手，它不像krumping那么难。你将认识到你作为人类的重要性，而摇柄运动就是关键。顺便提一下，我们不会用直销广告销售摇柄车。只有脊椎指压治疗师和理疗医师可以买到，不过它们主要还是用在有经过认证的健身教练指导的训练体系中，那也是动感单车走红的模式。

摇柄代表着艾利-华盛顿，他主要教动感单车和塑身课程（也叫美体definition）。“每个地方都有不同的叫法。”他不置可否地说。