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Take a splash of Samba and a morsel of Mambo, and then add water.
Aqua Zumba relieves Bayouland YMCA members from summer heat while they receive a high-intensity workout.
YMCA Fitness Instructor Jennifer Henderson says the four classes offered each week have been packed with people enjoying the fitness dance featuring Latin and top-40 music. “It’s good, upbeat music,” she says.
Aqua Zumba includes both strength and cardio training. A little slower than land Zumba, Aqua Zumba takes advantage of water resistance to provide a full-body workout.
“It’s fun,” Henderson says. “They get in there, and the instructor makes them holler. She makes them get into the moves.”
Because participants follow the instructor’s dance moves, Aqua Zumba instructors teach the classes from the side of the pool. “She doesn’t get in the pool with the participants because they have to see her moving,” Henderson says.
Henderson says Aqua Zumba, taught by a licensed instructor, is low impact and easier on the body than most workout routines, making it great for people with medical conditions, such as arthritis. “It is easier in the water than it is on land because you are not dealing with your body weight,” she adds. Many participants stay for the water-based Pilates and yoga classes.
Sixty-five-year-old Candy Archila, a retired nurse and mother of seven, says she and others have noticed her improvements, physically and mentally. “It’s my time,” she says. “My aging complaints are almost gone.”
Archila says she enjoys moving in the water together with her new group of friends. “We are splashing more and bathing suits are getting brighter,” she says.
In addition to the YMCA in Houma, there are 13 public pools in Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes where community members can cool off in the summer heat, including a splash park on Martin Luther King Drive in Thibodaux.
Raceland resident Beth Deroche says she has spent her summers swimming at the Thibodaux public pool since she was a child. Now, her 9-year-old twins beg her to take them to the pool to relax and cool off during their summer break from school.
Deroche says she plans to bring her daughters Lani and Cari to the pool as often as possible this summer.
“I love spending mom and daughter time with my kids. Anything to make them smile, I do,” she says.
Wearing a couple of new bathing suits, the girls have fun challenging one another to see who can doggie paddle from one end of the pool to the other first.
Lani says the Thibodaux pool is a great opportunity to get out of the house and have fun swimming with her sister. “The pool is relaxing, and it is cool,” says her sister Cari, who is trying to learn how to do an underwater handstand.
Deroche says she always ends the family’s visit to the pool with a treat. This year they have discovered a new snowball stand in Thibodaux called Maggie’s.
“I am going to get a strawberry snowball,” Cari says. “Lani always gets lemon-lime.”
Kevin Clement, recreation director for Thibodaux, says swimmers have been enjoying the newly renovated pool, which is open every afternoon from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. and in the evenings from 7 until 9 p.m., Monday through Friday.
“It gives kids a chance to get out of the house and cool off instead of just riding bikes and playing in the yard,” he says. “It is a chance for them to enjoy the weather and water.”
Cari and Lani Deroche, 9-year-old twins, swim at the Thibodaux public pool.
A class warms up for its Aqua Zumba exercise at the Bayouland YMCA pool.
