Where there once was a bar stocked with wine, beer and liquor there is now one stocked with juice, water, ice and blenders. What was once a dining room is now a two-room exercise studio.

Where people dined and mingled, they now work out and sweat at Shelter Island Yoga and Fitness, recently opened by Moussa Dramé. Asked during a recent interview to pick the most popular classes so far, Mr. Dramé started listing all of them — yoga, pilates, spinning, aerobics and boot camp and dance, the latter two taught by instructor and personal trainer Oscar Gonzalez.

Mr. Gonzalez said during an interview that his students would not need a couple of drinks to take one of his dance classes, but that it would still be a party. “I tell them it doesn't matter because nobody's watching you,” Mr. Gonzalez said laughing. “Well, the rest of the people in the class are, but that's okay.”

And like a party, Mr. Gonzalez's focus is on making sure his clients have fun. “If you don't have fun, maybe we have to change the class or look for another instructor, though my classes are pretty fun,” he chuckled.

Making exercise fun is the most important part, he said. Otherwise, people won't stay with a program long enough to get the results they want. “If one thing doesn't work, we replace it with another,” he said, speaking of both the classes offered and the fact that a restaurant is now a workout facility. Both he and Mr. Dramé said things are working out well with the fitness center since it opened. If things continue as they have, Mr. Dramé said, he would like to keep the studio open year-round.

When Mr. Gonzalez spoke of changes, he could have been speaking of his career path as well.

He started out working in advertising in Costa Rica, where he grew up. At the same time, he was also a dancer and performer. At one point, when he was 17 or 18 years old — he was not certain — his manager asked a group including him if anyone wanted to teach a hip-hop dance class. He raised his hand and gave it a shot. “I never in my life ever taught hip-hop,” he said, adding that the class lasted about three weeks. “People didn't quite understand what was going on.”

Shortly thereafter, the manager asked if someone would teach Latin dance. Undeterred, Mr. Gonzalez tried again. He started teaching Latin dance, giving him an advantage when he moved to New York City 11 years ago. He could not work in advertising then, he said, because he did not know a word of English. So he started teaching Latin dance again, a course that grew into the Danz-O class he trademarked last year and teaches at the studio. “I didn't have to talk too much,” he recalled. “I just had to move my hips and that's it.”

Dancing may not feel as intense as other classes, he said, because it does not focus on any particular muscle group, but it can burn between 600 and 1,000 calories depending on intensity, and it develops endurance and cardiovascular strength. It might also be more fun than another of his popular classes, a Saturday morning boot camp he holds on the lawn. “Everybody's talking about it and everybody's in pain because of me,” he said. He aims to build people's balance and endurance. Why is it called boot camp? “If they don't call me ‘sir,'” he said laughing, “they have to do pushups.”

But if someone cannot keep up, in any class, or has an injury, Mr. Gonzalez said he will modify the exercises for that person. That is part of Mr. Dramé's philosophy. “We don't want anyone to feel like they're not a part of this,” he said. That includes children. He says athletics can teach them not only about fitness and physical health, but about how to work as part of a team and deal with stress. The best way to teach younger students, he said, is through constant encouragement. “Things aren't going to happen in one day,” he said. “You have to be persistent and work it through until you get better.”

There are plenty of classes to choose from, for both children and adults.

The pilates class taught by Suzette Smith, Mr. Dramé said, focuses on building strength in the body's core and back muscles as well as helping with posture, body alignment and flexibility.

Maggie Davis, a personal trainer who teaches spinning, a stationary cycling class, wrote, “Anyone who can sit on a bike can participate in this great workout. That's the beauty of it.” The cycle's flywheel can be set to the desired resistance level and even at a low intensity, the individual will still get a solid cardiovascular workout. When spinning is not in session, the stationary bicycles go into a back storage room where they stay until the next class so the large two-room studio can function for other classes.

The fitness center's operations will be determined by how many people use it. Mr. Dramé hopes to keep it open year-round but said he will wait to see how its first summer season goes. Right now, he is optimistic that he can turn Shelter Island into “a sports island.”

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