Designed to help adults of all ages maintain an active lifestyle, classes incorporate traditional gym activities with a group warm-up and exercise stations. Fun and functional exercises include dancing, boxing, and Nordic pole walking, as well as high intensity cardio intervals (fit to your safety level), functional strengthening, agility, and multi-directional movements, walking drills, active stretching, and functional floor mobility exercise.
Participants must be able to:
• Walk 500 feet using assisted devices as needed.
• Get in and out of chair alone in 2-3 attempts.
• Move from standing to floor, provided a chair and minimal assistance.
Classes meet two days per week for 60 minutes.
MEET THE INSTRUCTOR
Peg Wanta, PT, DPT, has been a physical therapist for over 20 years. Her special interests include working with the older adult population to help them improve their balance, movement, strength and function. Peg is a certified PWR! (Parkinson’s Wellness Recovery) Clinician and a certified PWR! Fitness Instructor. She is currently a full-time instructor at Herzing University, in the Physical Therapist Assistant Program. She enjoys being an educator and assisting the Physical Therapist Assistant students in their development as they enter the Physical Therapy field. Peg also enjoys teaching yoga. Her physical therapy career includes working in the outpatient setting, amputee rehab, sub-acute rehab and home health.
Program is led by a Physical Therapist with assistance from Y staff and Physical Therapy Assistant students from Herzing University.
MON & THU | 1:00-2:00 PM or 1:30-2:30 PM
An exercise group geared towards individuals with Parkinson’s Disease (PD). These exercise sessions are designed and led by a physical therapist who has experience working with individuals with PD.
The hour-long class is split into two half hour sessions. Thirty minutes is spent on stretching, with a focus on trunk mobility. The other 30 minutes, participants walk on a treadmill. The theory behind the program is that improved trunk mobility, combined with an aerobic conditioning program, should lead to improvement or maintenance of functional activities used in everyday life.
Participants in all stages of the disease are welcome! Wear comfortable clothes, athletic shoes, and bring a water bottle to class.
THU | 1:00-2:00 PM
The Parkinson's Dance Class brings the art of dance to people living with Parkinson's disease. Class format includes warming up using a chair, center and balance work, standing, and moving across the floor while incorporating dance steps from different dance forms. Dancing is shown to help people with PD improve their ability to walk and enhances their quality of life. Classes run on a monthly-basis, meeting once a week on Thursday afternoons for 60 minutes.
The class is modeled after The Dance for PD® approach which began in 2001 when Olie Westheimer, the Executive Director of the Brooklyn Parkinson Group, approached the Mark Morris Dance Group from Brooklyn, with her idea of using dance as a beneficial activity for people with Parkinson's disease. Since then the program has grown to be offered at more than 100 sites in 13 countries around the world. Through this model, instructors use imagery, rhythm, and dance steps drawn from a variety of dance forms to help people with PD improve their coordination, mobility, and flexibility.
EXPERT, CARING INSTRUCTORS
The Parkinson's Dance Class is taught by a Y staff person with extensive experience in Personal Training with an emphasis on Movement Disorders and/or has completed the Mark Morris Dance Group/Brooklyn Parkinson Group's Dance for PD® Professional Development Workshop.
THE RESEARCH
According to research published in the Journal of Neural Transmission, dancing is shown to help people with PD improve their ability to walk and enhances their quality of life. The Brooklyn Parkinson Group and the Mark Morris Dance Group studied the benefits of Dance for PD® in patients with idiopathic PD. They concluded that "the combined physical and psychological benefits participants experienced suggest that through exercise, camaraderie and the simple joy of movement, dance classes are an effective way of ending the isolation and inactivity that too often define living with PD." Through their research, they completed a standardized measurement of overall mobility and participants after 8 weeks and 1 sessions showed a 10.4% improvement in overall movement and a 26.7% improvement in walking.