Trish Gray went Bollywood when a friend lured her to a new exercise class in Sebastopol based on the shimmy-shaking moves of Bhangra, a folk dance from the northern regions of India.
"After just a few lessons I was hooked" said the senior development manager for O'Reilly Media of Sebastopol.
"The intricacies of movement, from the fluid hip moves right down to the fingers and eyes" she said, "were such a challenge to my Western sensibilities that I simply had to try to master it."
Gray is one of those people who has always exercised and danced; she doesn't have to be convinced to work her body. But the method really needs to move her.
Exercise, she said, "has to challenge me both mentally and physically. I have a really hard time just using a machine for an hour."
To keep its its committed exercisers and to recruit new ones — only about 20 percent of the American public has a regular exercise program, according to the American College of Sports Medicine — the fitness business is always looking for new ways to strengthen, tone and stretch a body.
With that in mind we asked exercise experts which ways bodies will be bending in the new year. Look for everything frommore exotic dance moves and militarylike pre-dawn boot camp classes.
Why dance? Gray's teacher, Julie Marques at Core in Motion in Sebastopol, said the benefits are part cardio from the aerobic workout and "brain training in learning the choreography."
Plus, she calls dance "an instant de-stressor. "It's upbeat and fun. People go out feeling lighter."
After returning home from Nepal and India, she started teaching Indian dance at her home. "Only the Asian community had any idea what dance I was doing," she said.
But then came the movie "Slumdog Millionaire" and Bollywood music videos, and suddenly the jumpy dance that works on calves, hip flexors and pecs (from raised arms) was hotter than hip-hop.
Gray said, "Any time you confuse your muscles to that extent, you're going to reap the benefits."
Marques looks for more new dance trends that "take the catchy beats and dance moves from countries rich in rhythmic music and dance traditions, and simplify them for the average person."
Zumba, a dance fitness program first introduced in the 1990s, is still center stage at many gyms.
"Zumba is out of control," said Catherine Dubay at Montecito Heights fitness center.
One recent class, she said, "was so large they opened the doors and were dancing in the hall. We've gone from three classes a week six months ago to now seven a week.
"We haven't seen this type of growth in a single class type since indoor cycling started."
Zumba teacher Kelly Fitzsimons teaches seven adult zumba classes a week and two children's zumba-tomic classes.
The appeal is simple, she said. "It's a fun workout based on Latin rhythms. The zumba motto — &‘ditch the workout, join the party' — says it all.
"My Sunday class is crazy full, 50-plus people and filled with amazing energy." Several women wear heart-rate monitors and devices to measure how many calories they're burning.
"People get bored," said personal trainer Nadine Soffer. "Gyms can be boring. Sitting at a stationary machine every day for an hour is boring. Even if you change machines."
Soffer works at Coaches Corner in Sebastopol and has developed a new style of strength training that gets her clients off the machines and moving more than one body part at a time.
"Instead of just moving in a linear way, sitting still and pushing a bar out in front of you, you're standing, rotating your body, using your entire body, changing planes and directions. It's more fluid, like tai chi or dance."
That's similar to what Dawn Haight at the YMCA calls "functional fitness training." That might mean having someone hold a lighter weight dumbbell but press the weight overhead with one arm while standing.
"Simultaneously the person is pressing up onto the balls of the feet, as if they were placing an item on a shelf high above them," she said. "This is to gain strength, balance and flexibility, with the intention that putting something on a shelf above the head might actually happen in everyday life."
Then there's boot camp, a group exercise class modeled after basic training in the military that incorporates cardiovascular, strength, endurance and flexibility drills.
The Y has two early morning boot camps, at 5:30 a.m. and 7 a.m., and is adding more.
Haight says that unlike dance exercise, boot camp programs draw people because there is no choreography and less thinking.
"You just do what someone tells you to do," which is attractive if you have been "solving work, personal and family problems all day. It is nice just to be told what to do," she said.
Haight hears requests for more boot camps to meet outdoors, which adds more variety to the program, even if the moves are the same.
"Pushups become more interesting if you do 10 on the pavement, 10 with the upper or lower body on a bench and 10 in the grass," she said. "Then you move right to scaling across the monkey bars or running in and around the five big trees right next to you."
At the Airport Club, Dustin Davis says there's new emphasis on small-group training, an economic alternative to working with a personal trainer. In groups of three to eight, people can get individualized attention without the one-on-one fee.
That club is adding a slower version of zumba called half-time zumba with an emphasis on learning new moves.
Group exercise is key, said Dubay at Montecito. As a motivator, "being in a group increases the odds of you sticking with your exercise program." Fitness clubs also are banking on it to keep their businesses healthy in a slack economy.
This year, Dubay said, members "who were not using the club but paying dropped out. Those who stayed must have decided they needed to justify their monthly dues and are really using the club."
Club usage reached an all-time high in 2010, she said, but the overall membership base is 10 percent down from the peak two years ago.
The old adage "use it or lose it" works for the fitness business as well for as the stalwarts who wake up for 5:30 a.m. pushups and squats.
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: