Temperatures are dropping and soon frost will cover the sidewalks. Unless you’re a die-hard, it will soon be time to retire those roller blades, bikes, and running shoes for the season. Lest you become a cold-weather couch potato, here are some places to get you up and moving in the great indoors.

Pure Barre Northampton

The sudden dip into brisk autumn temperatures combine with the bright pink walls at Northampton School of Dance to make 6:30 a.m. a much perkier hour. The ladies of Pure Barre Northampton — slated to open at 63 King Street by the end of the month — are polishing up their teaching for prime time, renting this space until their own is ready.

One of the owners, Liz Roberts of Easthampton, lets me hang with the crew while they practice. They show me some things that’ll have me hurting tomorrow, but in all the right places.

Pure Barre is a popular franchise and this is the first of its kind in Western Mass. Roberts says the classes are designed to build long, lean muscles. Barre classes are a spinoff of ballet. Not all of us can move like a ballerina but barre classes can still help us work on those killer dancer muscles.

In the spirit of long and lean, the staffers continuously correct my foot positioning — keeping toes pointed in the micro-movements helps to build length as well as strength in the legs.

The workout exhausts each muscle group before moving on to the next. At a Pure Barre class, says Roberts, you’re busily pulsing, squeezing, and tucking those muscles in time with the bumping music.

“We try to teach to the beat of the music,” she says. “It’s a really hard workout and the music kind of distracts you and guides you.”

She’s right. Even in the most excruciating moments of muscle breakdown, the upbeat tempos keep me smiling and bopping. It’s kind of like in yoga when you’re holding poses for a tortuous stretch and you have to turn inward for a sense of peace — at Pure Barre, the music is that safe haven.

And anyone can do it, Roberts says. As she moves through all the difficult moves, talking with ease in moments that leave me absolutely breathless, she informs me she’s 21 weeks pregnant. The head instructor in the corner doing leg lifts? She’s 30 weeks along.

“It’s meant for everyone,” says Roberts. “It’s low impact and you get what you give.”

Roberts says her background is in finance, but she fell in love with Pure Barre in January while she was getting back into shape following her daughter’s birth, and knew she wanted to bring it to Western Mass. “It helped me get back into shape more than running ever did.”

Central Rock Gym, Hadley

The Hadley Rock gym, and rock walls everywhere, play to our instincts to climb and explore. So it’s no surprise that the gym is full of children when I arrive late on a Tuesday afternoon.

Bouldering — the gym’s version of climbing for beginners — is all about getting familiar with climbing without other training. Without ropes or equipment, beginners can climb the multi-colored, rock-shaped slabs to the top of the bouldering wall.

“You just throw on shoes and do it,” says gym staffer Levi Petersen.

It is tall enough to get a feel for what’s to come, but not so tall that people can’t take a big leap from the man-made summit onto the puffy padding that lines the beginners’ area.

Climbing more difficult faces with help from a rope, however, requires some skills. Petersen says in order to top rope at their facilities, gym-goers must first take an instruction class on how to belay — the secured rope system climbers use for leverage. For levels beyond bouldering, Petersen says, climbing is always done with a buddy. Someone, after all, has to hold the rope run through an anchor at the top of the climbing route. If you can’t find someone to go with you to Central Rock, there’s a buddy roster on a whiteboard near the entrance to pick up buddies during certain timeframes.

The most challenging style of climbing available at the gym is called lead climbing. Lead climbers are required to take at least three hours’ worth of instruction. “It’s really fun,” says Petersen. “But it involves the most training and skill.”

Lead climbers pull the rope up from the ground, clipping it as they go to silver hoops plastered into the rock wall. The style of belaying is different from top roping, says Petersen, as with top roping the rope comes from the top and the belayer — the buddy on the ground — must constantly tug on the rope to ensure there’s no slack in the line. With lead climbing, the opposite is true. Belayers on the ground must ensure there is enough slack so that the climber can pull the rope as she goes. Mixing up the two styles, he says, can result in tugging a lead climber from her high-up post. It’s not so far down to the cushy landing pad, but still …

“But that’s what class is for,” says Petersen. “And I personally think falling is a lot of fun.”

A day pass for non-members is $20, says Petersen, with an additional $8 for the required gear rental.

Paper City Fitness, Holyoke

Zumba may not be for everyone, says Paper City Fitness owner Kate O’Donnell, but it should be. The key to success in Zumba: don’t take yourself too seriously, have fun, and just keep moving.

I’ve been outspoken about my dancing needs and the fact that I love to dance is apparent, but choreography is not a friend of mine — I’m pretty terrible at learning pre-set steps. But Zumba is only a little bit about that. A good Zumba teacher will telegraph the steps and make them intuitive, so they’re easy to pick up. Trust me: if I can do it, you can, too.

I decide to scope out a Zumba class with Stacey Blanco on a Tuesday at Paper City Fitness and I have an absolute blast. And still, everyone in the class is sweating at the end.

Andy Verrocchi, 52, of Holyoke dances in the front row and barely misses a beat.

“I fell in love with it,” says Verrocchi about Zumba. “I love dancing but I hate exercise.”

Verrocchi, a Holyoke schoolteacher, says he still has pounds to lose, but coming to Zumba has helped him shed quite a few.

Blanco says she found Zumba four years ago and fell for it. “It’s like therapy,” says Blanco, who started teaching about a year ago. “For one hour, you take it all out on the dance floor. You forget about your bills and your boyfriend or whatever.”

Zumba is just one of several classes O’Donnell hosts at Paper City Fitness, which she says is designed to make exercise more accessible to everyone.

“That was the impetus for Paper City — to create a space for people who might never set foot in a gym,” says O’Donnell.

O’Donnell says she also wanted to establish a workout environment that is financially accessible, which is why her drop-in rate for classes is $5.

Krav Maga Official Training Center, South Deerfield

Brothers Mike, Kevin and Kris Gobeille agree that Kevin’s dedication to Krav Maga in the months before his motorcycle accident are what stirred him out of his month-long coma. Tonight is his second night back in class since his accident on May 17.

“His condition from [Krav Maga] is what saved his life,” says Kevin’s brother, Kris. Kris, 23, smiles at his older brother, whose neck scars are still fresh. Kris is bouncing back after severe head trauma and a broken leg, broken collarbone, and hand. “He’s come a long way.”

As I arrive at the Krav Maga Official Training Center in South Deerfield, studio owner Thomas Norwood is showing an intermediate-level Krav Maga class how to deflect a head-on grab from an attacker. In a sequence of forceful, strategic motions, Norwood flips his willing victim into a choke hold. “And you violently counter attack,” says Norwood. “Until everything is finished and he’s gasping for air.”

Now it’s the students’ turn to practice. “Nice and easy with your partner,” instructs Norwood.

The mat lights up with activity and noise as the students discuss, grunt, and grapple. I have to duck out of the way more than once lest I become a casualty.

Krav Maga is not a martial art — it’s less formal, less based in perfecting an art and more in honing skills for real-world self-defense. Norwood says anyone is welcome to jump in on a class at any point. He also has an Easthampton studio.

Norwood, who was in the Navy for eight years before he discovered Krav Maga, says it’s all about disrupting an attack by diverting an attacker’s thought process and hammering them with counter attacks. It’s never about being on the offensive. He says groin strikes, eye gouges, neck torks, and arm-breaking are all part of the repertoire, as Krav Maga is designed for real-life scenarios.

“It’s pretty dirty,” says Norwood. “But, you know, it’s a fight for your life.”

Gabriel Gladiator, West Springfield

“You can kill a person like this,” says Jiu Jitsu instructor and Gabriel Gladiator owner Gabriel Santos, demonstrating a choke hold.

Floral dress and all, I kneel behind Holyoke firefighter Kevin Smith to try the hold Santos has just shown me. I place Smith’s head and neck in the crux of my left elbow, reaching my left hand across his clavicle to grip my right bicep. For the clincher, I cross my right hand to the back of Smith’s neck for leverage, and squeeze.

“Harder,” says Santos. “He’ll tap when he’s ready to pass out.”

I squeeze harder, hesitantly testing my generously willing victim’s limits. I squeeze forcefully and he taps. I release my grip. Smith tells me if I’d squeezed any longer he’d have “been out.”

“You don’t have to be bigger or stronger than your opponent in order to defeat them,” Santos says.

In a striking difference from the boisterous and more informal Krav Maga course, the Jiu Jitsu students silently grapple on the mat, practicing precise movements over and over again.

Santos fought 16 professional Mixed Martial Arts fights and has the cauliflower ears to prove it. Originally from Brazil, he moved to the U.S. seven years ago after being invited to teach Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to students in Holyoke. Four years ago, he says, he opened his own studio in West Springfield.

Santos says while Jiu Jitsu requires dedication and commitment, anyone can do it, and he’s working to host more seminars that help the community and demonstrate its usefulness. He’s holding regular anti-bullying workshops, he says, saying when children hold themselves with confidence — equipped with the knowledge they can defend themselves — it’s often enough to ward off bullying. Two months ago, says Santos, he held a seminar for new police officers and he has another in the works.

Pioneer Valley Boxing School, Northampton

Working one-on-one with Amanda Pagán, 16, Pioneer Valley Boxing owner and instructor Djata Bumpus, 61, encourages her to clear her mind.

“You can’t control what other people think of you — you can only control what you think about you,” Bumpus says serenely, his hands gripping the rope outside the ring.

This is Pagán’s second class and Bumpus explains he’s still in the “diagnostic” phase. All of his level-one training happens one-on-one, he says. During his first days with a new student, Bumpus says he reads them, develops a personality portrait in order to plan how he will reach and train them.

“I’ve seen more people than the average physician and they don’t see them the way I do,” says Bumpus, who has been boxing 46 years and and has trained about 3,000 people. “It’s very personal. They come to me in their most vulnerable state. They let me see that part of ‘em and I get to make ‘em into killers.”

Bumpus says he treats women equally in his studio and has taught about 700 women. “I pride myself in that because females are socialized not to hit.”

In 30 minutes, Bumpus has me jabbing, crossing, and throwing a mean left hook. As a teacher, nothing flies by him. He’s quick to challenge — “What was that? Shape up! Punch through the pad not at it! Get back in your parallelogram!” — but just as quick to tell you when you’re doing well. “You’re picking this up quick,” he tells me.•

Contact Amanda Drane at adrane@valleyadvocate.com