Senior Classes | Joy of Movement

Senior classes (age 55 +) These classes are designed for the 55+ Communities, Assisted Living and Senior Centers

This program is designed as a seated program full of health & fitness exercises for all fitness levels instructed by a fun, compassionate and experienced trained instructor. All routines are done to well known, age appropriate music along with use of hand held props such as ball, hand weights, hoops, resistance bands and more.

We have found that the one on one contact with an instructor keeps everyone engaged along with giving you the most beneficial corrections to keep you safe.

Many times they are the only visitors that come on a regular basis to talk with those in assisted living centers and they look forward to that connection with us.

As everyone knows regular physical activity helps promote good health, prevent disease and improves the quality of life.

Although we are seated our classes start with a warm up exercise and progress to an aerobic cardio that is needed and then works its way down to a cool down. With our guidance, strength training with use of hand held weights improve their strength and posture, maintain bone strength, and reduces the risk of lower back injury and also helps you tone.

Walking is one of the best exercises you can do for the body, though seated we do a series of set choreographed routines that incorporate basic walking step, use of the arms, variations of footwork patterns. We incorporated various body isolations starting at our head working down to the feet using all area of the body to keep them mobile and flexible.

As you age, it’s not only joints that get stiff, but blood vessels in your body lose flexibility, this makes it harder for them to expand and contract as needed to deliver oxygen-rich blood to parts of the body that need it most, like brain, heart and muscles. Exercise can lower blood pressure and improve circulation.

Keep and improves your strength so you can stay independent
Have more energy to do things you want to do
Improve your balance and prevent falls, enhances mobility & flexibility
Reduces the impact of illness and chronic diseases like, heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, and certain types of cancer.
Perk up your mood and reduce feelings of depression
Improves quality of sleep which is vital for overall health
Reduces levels of stress and anxiety
Reach or maintain a healthy weightHelps brain function as diverse as multitasking and creativity, help with memory loss, cognitive decline and dementia. It also helps to slow down the progression of brain disorders such as Alzheimer disease.
Conditions the body by Increasing muscle tone and coordination
Decreases blood pressure and improves cholesterol levels
Builds and increases stamina
Strengthen the bones of your legs and hips
Develops the circulatory system

This body healthy program is done standing center floor, chair assisted, seated and on the floor. This is an exciting and comprehensive plan for actively slowing down and even reversing the aging process through gentle exercise that develops strong, flexible muscles. Our muscle cells are the key to our longevity. The powerhouse of our cells, the mitochondria, keep us looking and feeling young and muscle cells contain more mitochondria than any other part of the body. If we keep the mitochondrian fires burning, our muscles, not to mention our bones, heart, lungs and skin can all experience the vitality of youth. With eight basic age-reversing workouts that build core strength, lengthen and tone muscle, increase flexibility and speed weight loss. The best news of all it takes 30 minutes a day of gentle exercise to keep muscles strong.

With the expertise of our well trained and experienced instructors you will be guided step by step in a safe and beneficial workout. You do not need to have former dance or physical fitness training to participate in this program. You will start at a beginner level and with time when ready will progress from there.

Every Essentrics workout follows these two rules:

Rule 1 - The Essentrics is based on a functional concept of interlocking circles. This program is designed to reflect the reality of circular movement of the body: the arms perform a circular motion within the sockets, the torso performs a circular-type motion using the flexibility of the spine, and that the legs perform a circular motion within the hip socket.

Rule 2 - Balance the body

Essentrics improves the posture and tones your body overall. However, in order for this program to work there is one unbreakable rule; the entire body must be worked out in the same session so as to completely rebalance all muscles and joints. In order to achieve the overall long, lean look of Essentrics, every muscle must be equally engaged.

Strengthening must be balanced by an equal degree of dynamic flexibility, otherwise it is dangerous and counterproductive, leading to premature atrophy. The absolute worst thing we can do for our posture is to be sedentary! Being sedentary will inevitably lead to rapid aging, irreversible atrophy, and poor posture. Poor posture puts us on a slippery slope of cardio, digestive, skeletal and neurological problems.

Life is fun – so we shouldn’t let our bodies get in the way of living!

Line dancing presents itself as the perfect form of exercise for older people because it provides the benefits of an aerobic workout which helps maintain a healthy heart and also provides a platform for you to get involved in a social environment, which is great for mental wellness. The New England Journal of Medicine conducted a 21 year study and found that dance alone can lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia in the elderly. It has shown participants 75 years that engaged in dancing can lower the risk of dementia by a massive 76%. The reason behind this is believed to be that dance involves the most mental effort out of all physical activities that were included in the study (once a week- dance, board games, playing a music instrument). The benefits are clear when it comes to ones mental and physical well being. If you are getting on in life and would like to take up some form of physical exercise to get fitter and to become more active, highly recommend giving dancing a try.

Benefits of Line Dancing:

Improves balance as line dancing will teach you to maintain your own body balance when moving and following the beat of the music.
Improves your confidence, this alone has a huge impact on your life and open new doors that may have seemed out of reach beforehand.
Improves coordination, as there are many things to focus on at the same time. Learning to move in perfect sync with the beat can be a challenge but can also become very rewarding once achieved.
Combats loneliness, it ‘s a perfect environment to be with others and often be the solution to add a little happiness into our life.

You don’t stop dancing because you grow old…… You grow old because you stop dancing!

These are two different programs.

The beginner Tap Class is a technique class learning all the basics in tap dancing building into combinations and dances. It will progress into increased levels as time goes on. If you always admired tap dancers and never had the opportunity you can now check this off the “Bucket List”.

Tap N Burn- is a blend of tap basics and arm movements, that burn 400 or more calories with 3,000-4,000 steps per class. This class is for the adult who has had some previous dance training in tap and is looking for a higher level of cardio. We offer 3 levels of Tap n Burn!

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