This month we held our Athleisure Mag Summit Series where we invited a select group of our readers and community together to enjoy a class at SaltDrop in the East Village. It was a great way for them to be introduced to their Heated Sculpt 45 class, to meet the founder Dino Malvone who led us through our session, and they were gifted Sticky Be Socks as well as a 3-piece beauty skincare routine from Aeston West.
Avid readers know that last Winter, we included SaltDrop in our feature Athleisure List in our JAN ISSUE #109, and we wanted to find out more about Dino, how he came to the industry, why he wanted to create his own method, and more!
ATHLEISURE MAG: We had the pleasure of having you in Athleisure Mag last year to kick off the year in our feature Athleisure List and we took this class then which was my first introduction to you! How did you come to the world of fitness and what made you want to put your flag in the fitness industry?
DINO MALVONE: Fitness found me before I was looking for it and honestly that’s the only way I think it actually sticks. I wasn’t chasing a career or a brand. I was a person who kept coming back to movement because it was the only thing that made me feel like myself when everything else felt like noise. And then at some point I realized I was spending all this time in spaces that didn’t fully see me or the people around me and I thought someone should do something about that. So I did. I don’t think I chose fitness as much as I just stopped pretending I wasn’t already in it.
AM: What led to you wanting to create SaltDrop?
DM: My time with Barre3 was genuinely formative. I learned so much there, about how to lead a room, how to lead a team, and what it means to build something that people actually want to come back to. I have real gratitude for that chapter.
But at some point I started feeling the edges of the formula and I wanted to reach beyond them. I wanted to add jumping sequences, choreography that had a little more life to it, more effervescence. Things that didn’t fit inside what Barre3 was built to be and honestly shouldn’t have. That wasn’t the right container for those ideas. So I made a decision that I think a lot of people think about, but not everyone actually does. I decided to put my energy into building my own dream instead of continuing to build someone else’s. SaltDrop was what happened when I finally took that seriously.
AM: I love how you call out and encourage modifications. Why is it important to you to have this as part of your philosophy when you’re leading a class?
DM: Because the fitness industry has a savior complex and I’m not interested in participating in it. The idea that an instructor pushing you past your limits is somehow doing you a favor is something I actively reject. Your body is not a project that I get credit for fixing. When I offer a modification I’m not being easy on you. I’m being honest with you. I’m saying I trust you to know yourself and I’m not going to perform toughness at your expense. That’s a different kind of rigor and I think people feel the difference immediately.
AM: How would you describe SaltDrop as a fitness concept?
DM: It’s the antidote to fitness culture. Which I know sounds like something everyone says, but I actually mean it structurally. We are not optimizing you. We are not tracking your output or gamifying your progress or making you feel like you need to earn your place in the room. We’re just creating conditions for you to actually connect to your body and to the people around you. That’s it. And it turns out that’s pretty rare which says a lot about where the industry is right now.
AM: For those who have not taken your classes in person or virtually, what kinds of classes do you offer?
DM: We have three formats right now. Signature is our OG, the one that started everything and still hits the way it always has. Then we have Sculpt and Sculpt Heated, both are no cardio, and the difference is exactly what it sounds like because Sculpt Heated is at 90 degrees and that room does something to you. We are also currently building out a Flow class and a Strength class which I’m excited about because they expand what SaltDrop can be for people depending on what they need on any given day. And all of it is being developed inside something much bigger because we are in the middle of a major rebrand right now. So everything coming is being built with a lot of intention and a very clear vision of where this is all going. It’s a good time to be paying attention.
AM: How do you go about deciding the kinds of classes you will offer and do you foresee adding something new to the lineup?
DM: I don’t really look at what’s trending, because by the time something is trending it’s already starting to die. I look at what’s missing. What conversation is nobody having yet in this space. What does the person who feels unseen by the wellness industry actually need right now. That’s where I want to be. And yes there is always something new taking shape. I’m not someone who gets comfortable easily and SaltDrop reflects that. We grow when I grow and I’m always growing so.
AM: For those that may not have gone as far in their fitness journey as they wanted, what is something you would say to encourage them to get on the mat?
DM: I’d say stop treating your body like it owes you a different version of itself before you’ll be kind to it. That negotiation you’re having with yourself, the one where you’ll start when you lose the weight or have more time or feel more motivated, that’s not a plan. That’s a way of staying stuck that feels responsible. The mat is not waiting for you to deserve it. It’s just waiting for you. Show up as you are and let the rest figure itself out, because it will.
AM: What do you want people to walk away feeling after taking one of your classes?
DM: Like they remembered something about themselves they had been forgetting. That’s the only way I know how to put it. Not accomplished, not exhausted, not like they checked a box. Like something that had gone a little quiet in them got loud again for a minute. That’s what movement does when it’s done right, and that’s what I’m always chasing in a room.
AM: What can you tell us about the SaltDrop community?
DM: They ruin you for other fitness communities honestly. Once you’ve been around people who actually show up for each other and I mean in real life not just in the comments, you can’t really go back to the transactional version of this. I’ve watched people meet at SaltDrop and become each other’s emergency contacts. I’ve watched people move through genuinely hard seasons of their lives and have this community hold them. That doesn’t come from a good class. That comes from something much harder to manufacture and much more worth protecting.
AM: Recently, you were part of a multi-day event at Canyon Ranch Lennox. What can you tell us about this?
DM: Canyon Ranch Lenox is one of those places that makes you realize how loud your regular life actually is. There’s a stillness there that isn’t forced. It just exists and you settle into it pretty quickly. Being invited to teach in that environment was meaningful to me on a personal level, because the people who come to Canyon Ranch are not there to be seen. They’re there to actually do the work. That kind of room brings out something different in me as a teacher and honestly as a person. I left feeling clearer than I had in a while.
AM: Thankfully, we’re in the Spring and looking forward to Summer. Are there any upcoming projects or things that SaltDrop will be doing that we should know about?
DM: I’m in a very creative season right now personally and professionally and SaltDrop is going to reflect that. There are collaborations coming that I think will surprise people in the best way, and the podcast is taking shape in a way that feels really right. I’m not going to give everything away because I think the element of surprise is underrated. But I’ll say this, if you’ve been paying attention to what SaltDrop is building toward, what comes next is going to make sense in a very satisfying way.
AM: You’re coming up on your 4th year with your studio! What are 3 lessons that you have learned?
DM: One, the community is the whole thing. Not a feature, not a selling point, the actual thing. If you get that right the rest follows. Two, sustainability is not a compromise. I used to think that slowing down or resting was somehow at odds with ambition, and I was wrong about that in a way that cost me. You cannot build something lasting from a place of depletion, full stop. Three, your taste is your business model. Stop trying to appeal to everyone. The more specific and true you are to your actual vision the more powerfully the right people find you. The diluted version of your idea helps nobody.
AM: You launched a podcast, I Hear You Babe. Tell me about it and why you wanted to start it?
DM: It started because I kept having the same conversations over and over with people in my classes. About relationships, about their jobs, about this feeling of living someone else’s life instead of their own. And at some point I thought, what if we just put that in a room together. The format is simple and I think that’s why it works. Every week I give listeners a prompt, something specific enough to actually unlock a real story. Things like tell me the moment you realized you’d been chasing someone else’s version of success. Or tell me about the comment that was small but stayed with you. And people send me emails. Long ones, short ones, funny ones, devastating ones. I read them on air and I respond in real time, not from a script, just the way you would if a friend was telling you something that mattered. And I always go first. I talk about what’s actually going on with me that week, building SaltDrop, navigating New York, whatever is real. Because I think you have to earn the vulnerability before you ask for it from anyone else. That feels important to me. The audience is mostly women, the girliepops as I call them, and they are incredibly engaged. They write back. They send photos. They say hi to my cats. It has genuinely become its own community and I think that’s because the show doesn’t try to fix anything. It just tries to make people feel less alone in whatever they’re going through. That’s the whole job.
AM: You also have a project called I Fear You Babe. Tell us about that.
DM: Most true crime makes the victim the opening act. You get thirty seconds of who they were and then it’s all killer, all investigation, all spectacle. And I sat with that for a long time before I understood why it bothered me so much. If you don’t know who Linda Dewey was, not her case, her Tuesday mornings, her job, the way she probably moved through the world, then the justice part is just plot. It’s entertainment dressed up as something important. I Fear You Babe is built around the opposite idea entirely.
We spend real time with who these people were before everything happened. Because I genuinely believe that is the only way any of it matters.
We do two episodes a week. Thursdays are the deep dives, the full portrait, the story behind the story. Mondays are specifically about what broke that week in active cases, not recaps, not whatever went viral, but things that actually moved. Because the news cycle does not wait and neither do the people still waiting for answers. I built this show because I was tired of true crime that forgets the whole point.
AM: When you are not working on your business or prepping for your podcast, how do you take time for yourself?
DM: I protect my mornings like they are sacred because they are. That quiet before everything starts is the most honest part of my day and I will not negotiate on it. Outside of that, it’s long dinners with people who actually make me laugh, music that I’m a little too emotionally invested in, and coming home to Rocco and Vito who have never once been impressed by anything I’ve accomplished and I genuinely think that’s good for me.
IG @thesaltdrop
@dinomalvone
PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY | Dino Malvone
