Saturday

The last day of the conference! A great way to start the day is with an Aqua Zumba pool party!

The stars of the format were there--Maria Browning and Tony Witt, along with top trainers from North America and around the world. They wisely had a tag team approach to teaching this high-energy dance on the hot concrete deck. One or two would lead a few minutes and then seamlessly get replaced by someone else. Here they are all together for the grand finale:

It was good to see how far Aqua Zumba has come since its introduction at IAFC 3 years ago. It's definitely "dancier" and maybe this example went almost a little too far in that direction. It worked with this crowd because we were movement professionals, but I wondered at some points how such fancy footwork would go over with the general class population. Anyway, great fun, great music. Click here to see Maria in action elsewhere and here for Tony.

My last workshop was Ai Chi for the Core with Ruth Sova. It was yet another angle on a format that can be so many things to so many people for so many needs. You can use the "heavy" concept with the Ai Chi progression, especially the trunk stabilization portion, to get extra core strength benefits. The "heavy" concept asks the participant to think of a part of the body as so heavy it is impossible to move, yet making the effort anyway. What this does is engage the deeper and lower core muscles before the movement begins and creates a very stable base. It can protect joints during weight shifting and improve control for balance training. The water portion of the workshop was not only a chance to practice and feel the concepts but another chance for a beautiful silent Ai Chi progression led by Jun Konno. Thanks, Ruth! I've learned so much from you!





The last event of the conference was a grand pool finale led by a multitude of the different international presenters that had been there during the week. I decided to wimp out of participating in the water and just watched from the deck.

It was definitely high energy and at some points very high-splash, and a really fun way to say goodbye.

That's it for the conference reporting, but stay tuned for a few followup paragraphs.

Wednesday

Up, at 'em, in the water at 7:30 this morning, and just as well. On my program this morning was a deep water dance master class by Tatiana Maximova.

When you think of Russians and dance, ballet comes to mind, but this certainly wasn't the Bolshoi! Tatiana had a well-choreographed cardio workout that put together a few moves in a million different ways, and introduced some moves that I'd never seen in the deep water before. The wildest was making a vertical "wave" with your body. Talk about a super core move! Also her accent was fun to hear, "Poosh, poosh! More intensive! With the heep!"

My second session was "It's Hip to Kneed to Know", given by Terri Mitchell, an aquatic physical therapist from Texas. It was all about the latest trends in hip and knee replacements, and there is some really amazing stuff! Minimally Invasive Surgery methods allow hip replacement through a smaller incision without cutting the muscles and tendons around the hip. Hip resurfacing conserves more bone (usually with younger patients) by replacing only the surfaces of the socket and the ball of the femur. Knee replacements are being done with less cutting of soft tissue. Partial knees can be done (again usually on younger people) if only one side of the joint is damaged. A rotating platform knee allows the user to kneel and squat after recovery. Computer-assisted surgery can align the new joint with GPS-like accuracy. And all of this means less anesthesia time, less recovery time on heavy meds, quicker return to normal life. (And faster return to water aerobics class!)

Terri says that with a Tegaderm dressing sealing off the wound, she treats patients in her theraputic pool as soon as 2 days after surgery! She gave us a lot of suggestions for movement to help joint replacement members of our classes after they have finished physical therapy to help them continue and maintain their recovery. Terri also told us about a really super web site called Edheads. It takes the "ick" factor out of explaining some surgeries by using cartoon graphics, and is a great way to help kids and the squeamish understand what goes on. The link takes you to the knee replacement--try it!

The afternoon thundershowers moved in and clobbered one of my afternoon sessions. In my wanderings, though, I watched a really good class that somehow was timed to perfectly fit between bouts of thunder--Craig Ferguson, Mr. Hydrofit's class Deep to Shallow Integrations. What I caught was the shallow part, a super single-buoy routine that had people not only pumping some serious foam in the water, but used the buoy for leg massage and in the air for recovery between intervals.

Last in my day was an intentional dry land workshop called Feel the Water, taught by the Italian live wire Silvia Senati. It was an hour and a half (whew!) of taking land moves and converting them to water moves and then using the best method to display them on the pool deck using low impact but high energy. Moving as if you were in water so that class members can copy you directly. It was fun to observe a group of recent Aqua Zumba graduates among the crowd. They all executed even the simplest moves as if they were dancing! Did they get inoculated with a dance virus as part of their training?

Want to learn Ai Chi? Win the book!