My Plan For Health

The cities of Hilliard and Upper Arlington are offering some free fitness classes and special deals this fall.

Shannon L. Chaney, Upper Arlington LifeLong Learning & Leisure (LLL) Director, tipped me off to a week of free classes and a discount:

LifeLong Learning & Leisure is featuring a free fitness week from September 14-18 for any of the LLL exercise classes listed on the fitness grid in our 2009 fall catalog. Current and new students are welcome to try out a class they are not currently enrolled in and will need to sign the waiver form provided. Because there is no way for us to monitor attendance, participation will be dependent on space availability. Call 583-5333 for more information.

Take Zumba and Floor, Core & More and Save!
Take advantage of this limited-time fall fitness promotion. Students who register for the same full sections of Floor, Core & More and Zumba in one transaction will receive a 50% discount on their class fee for Floor, Core & More. The pairing of these two complementary classes gives students a well-rounded two-hour workout to enjoy twice a week as part of their regular fitness routine.

LLL class descriptions and online registration are here.

I highly recommend Molly Ohsner’s “Morning Total Body Workout.” Here’s the description:

Morning Total Body Workout
with Molly Ohsner, AFAA Certified, Exer-Safety Certified
This well-rounded class offers variety – simple aerobic movements, weight training using hand-held weights, abdominal strengthening, stretching and relaxation. Bring good aerobic shoes, a mat and a water bottle. Weights are provided. Class can be prorated for two days a week.
TIME: 9:30-10:30 AM, Monday, Wednesday & Friday
LOCATION: Marjorie Jones School of Ballet

I wish I could make it to a mid-morning class, but I just can’t… Molly’s Full Size Fitness class was my first foray into fitness classes all those years ago, and she put me on the road to losing my first 100 lbs. I would describe her class as mostly aerobic dance, as it contains lots of music and simple choreography.

It always meant a lot to me that she had the Exer-Safety certification, because I knew she would offer good counsel on preventing injury. Plus Molly is such a kind and genuine person that she made the class fun. I’m still good friends with some of the people I met there.

Meanwhile, as a Hilliard Recreation and Parks member, I received this email:

The Hilliard Recreation and Parks Department has a few new offerings!

Free Yoga Wellbeing Class
Stop in the Community Center on Wednesday, September 16 at 6:45PM to try out our Yoga Class for FREE!  This movement class follows the classical Hatha Yoga postures of breathing, meditation and relaxation techniques.  Gain flexibility, energy and strength.

The Hilliard Fall and Winter Program Guide and online registration are here.

I have to say, Upper Arlington has Hilliard beat for the sheer breadth of course offerings and ease of online registration. And while the UA course book is in PDF format, Hilliard inexplicably chose to offer its book as a series of high-resolution bitmap images which take a long time to load in a Web browser. Go figure.

Faculty and staff can find similar classes for free through the university Wellness Program, or through membership in RPAC, the Faculty and Staff Fitness Program, or the Center for Wellness and Prevention. But if you want to take fitness classes with friends or family members who don’t work at the university, or if you just want a class that’s closer to home, I think these community classes are a bargain for the money.

With FSFP’s water aerobics program over for the summer and only one week left in my belly dancing class, I have to think seriously about what I’m going to do fitness-wise between now and September (aside from going to the gym, that is). I can’t just go to the gym every day, and I miss being in the pool!

Currently, I’m looking for places to do water aerobics on my own, and have bought a pool membership from Hilliard Recreation and Parks. FSFP instructor Ya-Ting was kind enough to share her lesson plan with me. I’m going to laminate it and take it with me to the pool!

As to belly dancing, it was fun and challenging, and I plan to continue practicing at home. I’ve recorded many episodes of Shimmy, and discovered another show — All Star Workouts on FitTV — that has a belly dancing episode. While Shimmy has excellent production quality, I’ve decided that the All Star Workouts show is easier to follow, since it offers a more traditional classroom experience.

Some of the girls in my class at Habeeba’s have commented that they don’t know where to find belly dancing music for practice at home. So I put together a list of songs that I especially like. They are all available through Amazon (most via MP3 download if you want) and most of them are probably avialable via iTunes:

Marco Polo — Loreena McKennitt

Maris — Stellamara

Nahan – Niyaz

Hayati Inta — Natacha Atlas

Moi Et Toi – Abdel Ali Slimani

Dari — Zachary J. Mechlem

Gayatri Mantra Shuffle — Adham Shaikh

One new class I’m going to try this summer is Zumba. RPAC is offering it — here’s the description:

Zumba - Tired of the treadmill? Zumba is a high energy, heart pumping, dance-inspired workout that fuses traditional Latin rhythms such as Salsa and Meringue with hip hop. Each class will feature simple yet incredibly fun routines that will help tone your body and get your heart rate up! Dance experience is NOT required - Rachel will work with the group to ensure the best results. Best of all, you will be having so much fun you’ll forget you’re even working out!

Upper Arlington is offering it as well. And last Saturday I took a Zumba class at EquiVita in Grandview, which is offering free class trials for the month of June. I think most people don’t know about EquiVita yet, because I was the only student in the class! I got lots of personal attention, as you can imagine.

I think I’ll try several different Zumba classes to see what I like best. If I decide to stick with it, I’ll have to put together a Latin dance playlist!

I love water aerobics, but I’m bothered by how quickly my bathing suits wear out. The colors fade, the fabric thins. The suit I’ve used three times a week since January has gone from hot pink/black to bubblegum/gray. And there’s a spot in the back where the fabric looks like it’s started to disintegrate.

My current suit -- super-cute, but, sadly, about to be replaced.

So what’s going on? I think we all know that chlorine fades clothes — that’s how bleach works, right? But what exactly is happening chemically, and how can I make my suits last longer?

For these questions, I turned to Malcolm Chisholm, Distinguished Professor of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and chair of the Department of Chemistry. He explains it this way:

Chlorinated water produces hydrochloric acid, and hypochlorous acid. The latter is an oxidizing agent found in common bleach. If you spill beach on your clothes, you will soon have permanent damage and most likely holes where the bleach landed. In the washing machine, the bleach is added to dilution which is somewhat like the swimming pool. Now, as to your swim suit, if you wash it out thoroughly with cold water it should last a long, long time. I certainly have a swim suit that is at least ten years old.

A commercially available chlorine neutralizer

Wow! I wish I could get a suit to last ten years! At first, I tried to preserve my current suit with a chlorine neutralizer. This was a long and tedious procedure. I brought a large plastic container to RPAC, and soaked my suit in it with the neutralizer while I showered after class. Then I agitated it in the container like ye olde tyme wash basin, and rinsed it multiple times with cold water. This actually seemed to work — my suit looked like new — but it was inconvenient. So one day I gave up, and just rinsed my suit in cold water. That’s when the fading started. Maybe I just didn’t rinse it thoroughly enough.

So why does the fabric disintegrate, I wondered? Bathing suits are typically made of synthetic polymers such as nylon and lycra, which are known for their strength and elasticity. Chisholm had this to say:

If you want a more chemical answer, then the bleach breaks down the polymers so that the fabric falls apart slowly as dust particles.

Ah-ha! So that explains it. I have a tip about a company that guarantees its suits for a year with proper care. I’m going to check it out.