Even though I spent much of the late '80s and early '90s attending aerobics classes, I have never seen the allure of something like Jazzercise.
You could add Zumba — or just about any kind of exercise set to music — to the list of things I thought people did when they wanted to feel like they were working out, but didn’t actually want to do the work.
I admit, without a lot of shame, that fitness for me has always had a symbiotic relationship with suffering. If it doesn’t hurt, it’s not helping. You grind for weeks so you can have fun on a field of play for a few hours. This, I am rather ashamed to admit, is the way I was conditioned.
My aversion to fitness classes was likely exacerbated by my complete lack of rhythm.
And when I confess to having no rhythm, I mean that I cannot clap in time to music, cannot move to a musical beat and cannot count rhythmic time in any way.
I once had a guitar teacher tell me that without rhythm there was no music. That’s when I knew then my country music career was a fantasy — something even my inability to sing on key couldn’t persuade me to believe.
So even as I watched my sister-in-law, Tonya Stokes Donaldson, transform her body and her life with Jazzercise two years ago, I was not even mildly tempted to join her in a class until she bought the studio in Brigham City.
If she was willing to make it her livelihood, I thought, I need to understand why.
It’s important to understand that I have a long and shameful relationship with exercise videos and classes. Richard Simmons was as much a fixture in my childhood as Laura Ingalls and TV dinners. Despite years of attending aerobics classes, I spent as much time picking out outfits (including chunky belts and headbands) as I did actually learning what a grapevine or step ball change were.
I put on my running clothes and tried to have as few expectations as possible when I walked into her brightly lit Jazzercise studio two weeks ago.
It was 5 a.m. on a Monday, and right away it felt more like a party than a suffer fest. As my sister-in-law began teaching, I was swept up in the joy I felt, even as I struggled to mimic her steps.
Tonya is one of those people who seems to have it all figured out. She’s organized, talented, and successful. She is a beautiful woman with a beautiful family, and she might be one of the most resourceful people I’ve ever met.
So I was surprised to hear how a friend’s decision to drag her to an early morning Jazzercise class two years ago transformed her life.
“I was about 60 pounds overweight,” she said, reminding me that I probably remembered this (for the record, I had no idea she had 60 pounds to lose!). “I hadn’t done any exercise for probably 15 years with any consistency. So I went with her to an early morning class, and the music, the energy and the camaraderie just captured me instantly. And I loved the feeling of my body moving again.”
Tonya was a talented softball and basketball player in high school, who retains the discipline and drive she learned from competition. She said the classes captured her heart almost immediately “because I felt like I was on a team again.”
She laughs about learning the dance moves.
“I had no dance skills,” she said. “But I think some of the movement is simple enough that I was challenged to keep going and get better and better. And it was kind of fun to feel like you’re a hot mama again out there dancing.”
For the first year, she said she focused on losing weight and getting in shape.
“I could see and feel results,” she said, noting that May is National Fitness Month and Jazzercise is offering free classes. “But I loved what it did for me not only physically but emotionally, mentally and socially. All of a sudden I had this great group of friends who loved to have fun and loved fitness in a whole new way. Emotionally, I was a far better mom, friend, wife; it just tapped into a side of my personality that I think had been dormant for awhile.”
A lot of us do this.
We grow up, pursue careers, have families and create really beautiful lives. But somewhere along the way, we forget that part of living is being joyful.
Tonya found that joy, and then she decided to become a teacher in hopes of helping others find their own transformative experiences. When the studio went on the market last year, the former relator jumped at the chance to run her own business again.
Each of the four instructors took turns teaching us steps, with the music offering a kind of permission to be silly and giddy that belied both the hour and my age.
I was not good — not by any measure. But I was having a blast.
Once Marisa Raymond took over, I knew I was doomed. Her routine was delightful, and I embraced it. But I was hopelessly lost and off time.
The 27-year-old just recently passed the instructor’s test, and she admits that she thought Jazzercise was “for old ladies in legwarmers.” Her mother-in-law talked her into coming, and she said it only took one class to change her mind.
“I was hooked,” the former dancer said smiling.
Jazzercise took on a life-saving role in 2014 when, at age 24, she suffered a stroke due to an arteriovenous malformation, which is an abnormal connection between the veins and arteries in her brain stem that hemorrhaged.
Luckily, she was working in a hospital in Idaho when she had the stroke. After surgery, she had to endure months of radiation.
“It was horrible,” she said. “It was life-shattering for me at the time because I went from being super active, working 60 hours a week, to not being able to do anything for months.”
She credits Jazzercise with more than helping her regain fitness.
“This was a huge healing part of my comeback,” she said. “It’s just so fun.”
Over and over the women I talked to described how reluctance and doubt gave way to friendship and fun. For some like Anna Olson, 37, the transformation helped her deal with the emotional “nose-dive” she took after being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis as age 30.
“This was better for me than anything else I could’ve been doing,” she said. “I looked at these amazing ladies around me, and we know each other. We know each other’s struggles, we know our victories; we celebrate with each other; we pray with each other. It’s a support group emotionally, probably even more so than physically.”
For others, like instructor Carrie Hansen, 38, the classes became the perfect cross training for her marathon training.
Jazzercise, which was founding by a dance instructor in 1969, recently announced a program called Girls Force, which allows teenage girls ages 16-21 to attend classes for free during 2017.
www.jazzercise.com
Nearly 40 girls have attended classes at the Brigham City studio alone.
“They’ve just brought a whole new level of energy,” she said. “And it’s been fun to see them realize how much fun fitness can be at a young age. And hopefully it will carry on.”
The day I attended, Heidi Bennett, 17, and Aubree Olsen, 19, participated in the 5 a.m. class. Olsen is training for a Spartan race, and Bennett is a cross-country runner. Both of them said it has expanded their idea of how one can find both fitness and challenge.
“The motivation is that there are so many different people around you,” Olsen said. “I mean, there are 60-year-old women in here, and if they can do it, I can do it.” I’ve thought a lot about my experience in that class, and I think the transformative power of Jazzercise lies in the collaborative spirit. It is less about getting the moves right and more about the decision to move toward a better, more fulfilling life. Each woman brought her own unique challenges to that room, but those struggles are made lighter with their collective laughter.
The physical demands of the classes may make us stronger, but it’s really the knowledge that if our joy is enhanced by each other, then our burdens are certainly diminished when we share them.
And maybe Anna Olson summed it up best.
“Exercise is absolutely good for just about anything that ails you.”
And that’s true, even when you grapevine to the left as the rest of the class goes right. As it turns out, it isn't suffering and fitness that have a symbiotic relationship — but exercise and joy.