Bossier Council on Aging uses new lift to help with summer water aerobics class

Senior citizens are making a big splash this summer.The Bossier Council on Aging is offering local seniors a full-body, low-impact water aerobics class three days a week at the Ft. Smith public swimming pool. Jackie Conner of Bossier City has been an instructor for 20 years now and said her 45 minute class reaches everything from the eyes to the tips of the toes.

I do this for the benefit of the seniors and for those who may have health problems, Conner said. It's something that will move every part of your body.

Donald Oakley of Bossier City is a newcomer to Conners class this year. In his second summer with the BCOA, Oakley said he is enjoying time in the pool thanks to a new lift installed this year.

Oakley, who had his right leg amputated at the knee two years ago, is one of two seniors using a remote controlled automated handicap chair lift to get safely in and out of the pool.

According to Clay Bohanan, Director of the Department of Parks & Recreation, the new lift was installed this year to meet state and federal law.

The lift we had there originally was outdated and old, Bohanan said. We went ahead and installed a new lift there and at the other two public pools also.

Last summer, Oakley wondered if he would ever get the chance to get in the water.

Gee, I wish I could get in there, he recalled thinking as he passed by the pool.

Oakley said the new lift is a God-send.

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Lift helps seniors make a ‘splash’

Fazillah Hussain (right) with Che Mansor Mat (left) and Jeorge Subramaniam checking out the aerobics session T-shirts. Pic by Ramdzan Masiam

GEORGE TOWN: TO commemorate George Town as the host city for the fifth Tourism Promotion Organisation forum (TPO), the Penang Island Municipal Council (MPPP) will organise a mass aerobics session at the Esplanade on Jul 1.

Currently, over 1,000 people have already signed up with MPPP and the organisers are hoping for another 1,000 more to join in the free two-hour session which will begin at 7.30am.

MPPP recreation, tourism and international affairs department assistant director Fazillah Hussain said free T-shirts bearing the TPO logo will be given to participants.

"This would be a great time for everybody to get together and stay fit and celebrate Penang as the host for the upcoming TPO."

She added that paramotor experts will fly into Esplanade with the TPO, MPPP and state flags on the day as part of the grand celebrations.

The aerobics session will be led by Penang Physical Fitness Association vice-president Jeorge Subramaniam and Senam Seni Aerobik instructor Che Mansor Mat.

Those interested to join can come to the front of the City Hall building next to the Esplanade by 7am on the day or call the instructors at 016-411 2205 (Jeorge) or 012-432 3324 (Che Mansor).

George Town was selected earlier this year to host the TPO, beating many other cities in the region which had lobbied hard for the honour.

The TPO forum will see 200 people, including mayors, government delegates and industry players getting together to talk about the tourism industry at large.

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Aerobics at Penang Esplanade

Posted: Jun. 17, 2012 | 2:04 a.m.

Chances are, everyone in the Las Vegas Valley knows someone who is taking Zumba fitness classes. At the Zumba.com website, 554 classes are listed within 25 miles of Las Vegas. Classes are offered at fitness and athletic clubs, gyms, YMCAs, senior centers, Strip hotels, schools, dance studios and even Opportunity Village.

Zumba is the current big thing in fitness. In the mid-1990s, a Colombian named Alberto "Beto" Perez forgot his aerobics music when scheduled to teach an aerobics class. He improvised using his personal collection of Latin music and found his class had new energy. An idea was born.

Zumba came to the United States in 2001. Fitness classes with a party atmosphere and lots of rhythmic Latin music have since spread to 110,000 locations in 125 countries. DVDs are available, as is Zumbawear and even a Zumba-branded video game.

According to Bret Fitzgerald, vice president of corporate communications for Las Vegas Fitness Clubs, Zumba classes are the most popular classes his organization offers. One student noted that some classes are so crowded, participants are urged to arrive a half-hour early to "get a good spot."

Although most Zumba classes in the Las Vegas Valley follow the basic fitness format, an instructor can be licensed in eight different levels of classes, including classes geared specifically to the active older adult, classes for children ages 4 to 12 and even water-based workouts using the Zumba formula.

Local entertainer Elisa Fiorillo, currently on tour as a backup singer with Prince, says Zumba classes are the only workouts she enjoys. Fiorillo was on a seven-day-a-week Zumba schedule before going on tour.

"I'm happy when I'm in class. I get lost in the music," she says. "Also, the more I can develop my lung capacity, the better I can sing and move onstage."

The teacher who first sold Fiorillo on Zumba fitness is 74-year-old Ginny Jones, almost a legend at the Las Vegas Athletic Clubs, having taught for them since 1984. Jones is a former ballet student, skater with the Ice Capades and the "Lido" shows in Paris and Las Vegas, a dancer in Las Vegas shows such as "Viva Les Girls" at the former Dunes and an aerobics teacher.

Jones typically teaches eight classes a day at the Green Valley Las Vegas Athletic Club. Her schedule recently was affected by a tendon issue. "Such a bother," says the tiny blonde, still retaining a hint of her British accent. "I teach a number of different classes, but Zumba fitness is by far the most popular. We typically have classes of 60 to 70 people."

Originally posted here:
Zumba Beat Helps Keep Residents Fit

AEROBICS enthusiasts should not miss the opportunity to take part in mass aerobics session at the Esplanade in Penang on July 1.

Penang Municipal Council (MPPP) assistant director Fazillah Hussain said the aerobics workout was one of the activities to promote the Tourism Promotion Organisation (TPO) Forum for Asia Pacific.

The fifth biannual forum, which is hosted by MPPP, is scheduled to be held from Sept 18 to Sept 20 at the Shangri-Las Rasa Sayang Resort & Spa in Batu Ferringhi.

A total of 68 city mayors and 32 industry players are expected to attend the forum, which is aimed at creating an inter-city network besides boosting the tourism industry in all member cities in the Asia Pacific region.

Fazillah said there would be a paramotor show during the aerobics workout with paramotor pilots flying at some 0.3m above the ground and carrying small TPO banners.

Ten paramotor pilots will take off from Esplanade for a 45-minute spin around the island in the bid to promote the event, she told a press conference.

She added that 2,000 free TPO T-shirts would be given away to the participants.

The aerobics session is jointly organised by the Penang Physical Fitness Association.

Registration is free. The deadline is on June 24. Those interested to join the event can call Che Mansor at 012-4323324 or Jeorge Subramaniam at 016-4112205.

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Mass aerobics session to attract 2,000

By Erez Zukerman June 8, 2012 SAN FRANCISCO Microsoft Word has a built-in spelling checker with a touch of grammar smarts, but it will never highlight a big word and ask whether you can swap it for a small one, or note that a verb is weak and deserves replacing. For that kind of advice, you must turn to a dedicated product such as ClearEdits, an $80 add-in for Microsoft Word.

In pricing, ClearEdits is somewhere in the middle of the writing-advice pack: Its more expensive than Serenity Softwares Editor ($55; $75 with Word add-in), but much cheaper thanSentence Aerobics($139) andStyleWriter($190 for the Professional version). Its more tightly integrated with Word than either Editor or StyleWriteralthough both of those offerings play well with Word, they run outside the main Word window. ClearEdits, like competitor Sentence Aerobics, runs right inside Word. In fact, ClearEdits is even more tightly bound into Word than Sentence Aerobics: Instead of using its own custom pane, it simply adds comments and color-coded formatting to your document, much as a human editor would.

Of course, with a program such as this, price and interface dont matter as much as sound usage advice. In this department, ClearEdits plays it safe, forgoing ambitious pattern recognition and mainly highlighting single words or idioms and asking polite questions about them. The advice is concise and pleasantly worded: Unnecessary word? Cut if used only for emphasis; leave if reflexive pronoun is needed for meaning. Thats what I got for the word itself, which neither StyleWriter nor Sentence Aerobics flagged for consideration.

ClearEdits can also search for language patterns that it calls Vector Edits, such as the -ed suffix, which can indicate passive voice, a participle that needs to be made into a verb, or an adjective that can be simplified. This feature still leaves the user to do most of the work, because you will have to figure out which of the myriad options applies in each case, and whether the item is something that you should change. Also, since every Vector Edits category has so many matches, ClearEdits documentation suggests using Vector Edits one at a timewhich means youll need to recheck your text several times. On the plus side, because ClearEdits output consists of just highlighted words with native Word comments, it is easier to work with than either Sentence Aerobics (which is festooned with colors) or StyleWriter (which requires constant switching back to Word for making changes).

ClearEdits also offers some basic statistics about your document, such as the longest and shortest paragraphs and sentences, the average number of words in a sentence, and so on. Like StyleWriter, it employs its own usage metrics, ClearScores, which offer at-a-glance analysis of your text. While StyleWriter shows its metrics in the status bar, ClearEdits keeps the scores in a separate window, which is not as convenient to use.

The usage advice I received from StyleWriter tended to be more useful, since StyleWriter highlights particularly long sentences, checks for active voice, and more. ClearEdits advice is basic though sound, and did not contain awkward mistakes like those in the output from Sentence Aerobics.

In a perfect world, one application would combine StyleWriters or Editors lexical richness and ClearEdits perfectly integrated interface. Until such a program comes along, you will have to decide whats more important for you: ease of use, or comprehensive advice.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendors site, where you must register to download the latest version of the software.

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ClearEdits for Microsoft Word Helps You Write More Concisely

Personal trainer Edith "E" Leclerc, front, holds a water aerobics class Tuesday at the Pelican Bay Club House in Daytona Beach. (N-J | Steven Notaras)

When body building and figure competitor Edith "E" Leclerc went to her first water aerobics class a few years ago, she wasn't expecting a challenging workout led by an 84-year-old instructor.

Leclerc, 49, however, was surprised to find that water aerobics class at Pelican Bay sent her heart rate racing as she plunged through the water's resistance. After a few months of going to the class, she lost two inches from her waistline.

Eventually, Leclerc volunteered to teach the class for free. But when the economy put a halt on her income from her real estate properties in 2007, Leclerc needed a job.

"I didn't want to hate waking up every morning," Leclerc said. "So I wrote down my passions and thought about how I could make a living doing what I love."

Leclerc's passion for health led her to become a certified personal trainer in 2007. She now teaches four water aerobics classes a week at Pelican Bay. She also started Water Boot Camp -- an intense cardio water workout that combines swimming, weights and relay races. The average age of participants for boot camp is 30 to 40 years old, Leclerc said. This month, she will begin teaching boot camp classes at MG on the Halifax in Holly Hill, which will be open to the public.

"We do 30 to 50 reps of each exercise super fast," she said. "It exhausts the muscles and is a lot of cardio."

When she was 25, Leclerc moved to the area from Canada's province of Quebec. Unlike most young women, Leclerc had trouble gaining weight and began working out with a friend who was training for a body building competition. She soon decided to enter one herself. She competed in two body building competitions before she switched to figure competitions. In 2008, the mother of two placed third in the Debbie Kruck Classic figure competition in Daytona Beach.

"It requires a lot of self-discipline and I find that I go through some of the same struggles as my clients when it comes to nutrition," she said. "But as a personal trainer, I need to be an example for others."

Three days a week Leclerc, who now resides in Ormond, leads a group of women who reside in Pelican Bay through an hour-long senior water aerobics class that combines weights and strength and cardio exercises. She's been leading the same core group of women -- many of them in their 70s and 80s -- for the past six years.

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Ormond Beach woman's passion for fitness leads to new career as personal trainer

Clarity matters in business writing. Business documents are not always fascinating, and if your writing is oblique or cumbersome, you risk losing your readers midway through your text. VanWrite Sentence Aerobics is a $159 (free Web demo) add-in for Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010 that tries to analyze your text and offer constructive criticism, so you can revise the wording for clarity and brevity.

"Tries" is the operative word here, really: Before Sentence Aerobics can recommend changes, it must correctly parse the original language--but it didn't succeed at that preliminary task when dealing with the simple paragraph that I fed it. The paragraph read, in part:

"What could possibly go wrong? As it turns out, quite a bit. [...] Spanning Backup ($3 per month for regular Google accounts users) is a cloud backup service [...]"

The advice in Sentence Aerobics stresses sound writing principles such as using strong verbs; unfortunately, 'accounts' isn't a verb in the sample text.Sentence Aerobics circled the word accounts above in green, applauding me for using such a "Strong Verb"--but the word is used as part of a compound noun here. (A clearer formulation of the parenthetical phrase would be "$3 per month for users of regular Google accounts"; unless, of course, the intended meaning is "$3 per month for regular users of Google accounts." Admittedly, expecting a program to figure out that level of nested ambiguity is asking a lot of it.) The program also approved of the word turns in the phrase "As it turns out," failing to parse it as an idiom. Meanwhile, Sentence Aerobics asserted that the word could in "What could possibly go wrong?" was a "Weak Verb" in need of revision, rather than a necessary conditional auxiliary to the verb go in what amounts to a common catch-phrase.

In short, Sentence Aerobics' parsing is limited and error-prone, especially in dealing with idioms. Competing product StyleWriter Professional is less susceptible to such errors: It let the same exact paragraph slide with no recommendations, other than noting that one line has a high "glue word" count.

Once Sentence Aerobics finishes parsing your text, it offers recommendations. For the most part, its advice is sensible: Sentence Aerobics favors short, active sentences, and tries to trim prepositional phrases from the text. But since its parsing is often faulty, you end up with many recommendations that you can't implement. For instance, when I started a line with "It turns out this is not a bug," Sentence Aerobics told me that starting a sentence with the word it is not a good idea, since the reader may have trouble figuring what it refers to. But this generally sound advice again misses the mark due to poor parsing.

Sentence Aerobics integrates well with Microsoft Word 2010. Immediately after installing it, I had some trouble finding it in the interface, so I methodically clicked through the tabs until I found it as a button in the Review tab--a sensible spot. When you click the Sentence Aerobics button, a pane opens on the right side of the window. The upper portion of the pane shows the text that the software is currently analyzed, and the lower portion shows recommendations. You can change the font size if you like.

Color plays an important part in Sentence Aerobics: Strong action verbs are circled in green, subjects and verbs are highlighted in pink, prepositional phrases are written in gray, and some have yellow highlighting. This makes it easier to visually parse revisions, but the colors cannot be customized. Being color blind, I had to use Colorblind Assistant to figure out that the pink highlighting was indeed pink and not gray.

Sentence Aerobics bases its recommendations on writing guide called Target Editing, written by VanWrite founder Linda Vanderwold. An abridged 75-page PDF edition of the book, offered as a free extra with Sentence Aerobics, provides language-editing tips and concepts that you can use apart from a dedicated software application.

Sentence Aerobics is based on solid usage advice, and it integrates with Word 2010 better than StyleWriter does. But despite these bright points, the program's spotty language-parsing capabilities prevent it from being a truly useful language-editing tool for natural business writing.

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Though Sound on Fundamentals, Sentence Aerobics Struggles to Parse Idioms Correctly

GRAND CHUTE (AP) - Appleton Alliance Church will use aerobics classes, weight lifting and other physical fitness activities to connect the community with God when it opens its new sports and recreation complex in June.

Dubbed Xcel Sports, the facility is part of a $22 million, 120,000-square-foot expansion project called Finishing the Work. The expansion, scheduled for completion in summer 2013, will nearly triple the church's size from 60,000 square feet to about 160,000 square feet and is the largest non-governmental project in Wisconsin, said Marty Myse, the Christian church's building chairman.

The sports complex, which opens June 11, will feature a gymnasium and fitness center offering activities such as women's aerobics and spinning classes as well as recreational opportunities for families, children and the church's youth ministries.

The Rev. Dennis Episcopo, the church's senior pastor, said Alliance began building a sports ministry in 2006 - years before deciding to construct a sports facility. The church already boasts soccer fields and a basketball court that hosts a large outdoor basketball league every Sunday night.

Youth basketball camps attract more than 400 children to the church each summer.

"We wanted to have sports and rec as a way to connect people to God," Episcopo said. "They may not come to a church service, but no problem."

That church has run camps, leagues and special events for the past six years. "We have about 2,000 participants per year, with about 80 percent of those people being from outside Appleton Alliance," said Ryan Borowicz, head of the sports ministry program at Alliance. "The sportsplex really broadens the number and type of activities we can offer, as well as being a great resource for the other ministries of the church, particularly the children and the youth."

The sports ministry - an outreach to the community for those who may not know Jesus, but would like to - is keeping with the church's vision of connecting people with God and one another, Myse said.

"It's an opportunity to reach them through a sporting event, basketball or whatever," he said.

Plenty of people attend services at Appleton Alliance each week, and the expansion will add much-needed space to the overflowing church. Appleton Alliance ministers to more than 3,000 people during its four Sunday services, and attendance is growing.

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Valley church adds huge sports complex

DALLAS

For years the common rule of thumb in the fitness world is that you don't weight weights or aerobics on the same day, they say it's bad for one or the other--but now new research finds that you can actually have your cake and eat it too.

Harrison Oldham doesn't eat much cake but he does exercise a lot and was one of those that lifted weights on one day and did cardio the next.

It's just the way it was done because most thought you benefitted more by doing one type of exercise a day.

Including Harrison Oldham.

"I played sports and that's how coaches always explained it to us, Harrison said. You know, you go and focus on one thing a day and that's just how you do it, you break up your week."

But Canadian and Swedish researchers say not so fast.

Both had men ride stationary bikes then do various leg exercises on the same day.

Before and after each session the men's legs were biopsied and researchers found that one exercise did not interfere with the benefits of the other.

Tyler Nicholson is personal trainer at Cross Fit 214 in Dallas, Texas.

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Lift Weights or do Aerobics? Age old question aswered

National Senior Health & Fitness Day kicks off at 8 a.m. today at the Purrysburg Fitness Center.

The schedule includes:

Giant Aerobics Class: 89:30 a.m. in front of the Purrysburg Fitness Center.

Get your heart pumping during the Gigantic Aerobics Class. If it rains, the class will be held at the pavilion. Enter the raffle to win a free T-shirt. There will also be chair instruction for beginners.

Aerobics instructors are Chamoni from 88:30 a.m., Lee from 8:309 a.m. and then Lois from 99:30 a.m.

Free Fitness Testing: 89:30 a.m., Purrysburg Fitness Center Aerobics Room.

This is a great way to compare fitness levels from year to year. You are welcome to come and go between the aerobics class and the fitness testing. The fitness testing will be done on a first-come, first-serve basis. Plus a T-shirt raffle.

Four fitness tests are available: Chair stand test testing lower body strength (30 seconds); back scratch test testing upper body flexibility (1 minute); 8foot up and go test agility test; and step in place test measures aerobic fitness (2 minutes).

The Health Fair is from 10 a.m.1 p.m. in Pinckney Hall.

More than 70 health and wellness companies will be on hand. Health care providers will offer informational handouts, free screenings, demonstrations, tests and health screenings including: Blood pressure, oral cancer, skin cancer, ABI, diabetes, foot pressure mapping and much more. They will also have lots of free goodies.

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Get moving today at National Senior Health & Fitness Day