Anne Amar remembers having 30 pounds to lose.
And out there in the get-fit universe, there was the panoply of exercise videos, cardiovascular workout machines and weight-lifting routines.
But as one who gets bored easily, Amar needed something else.
She found it in Jazzercise, the program created by Judi Sheppard Missett from Red Oak, Iowa, back in 1969.
And though a parade of aerobic workouts has been coming and going ever since, Amar is a proud practitioner of Jazzercise: For 21 years now, she’s been reveling in its effects on her life.
Like the much younger fitness craze called Zumba, Jazzercise is aerobics stirred together with music, Latin and otherwise.
In a recent Thursday morning class in Port Angeles, Amar taught steps to songs by Diana Krall, K.T. Tunstall, Ricky Martin and Carlos Santana. She’s in her element up on that stage, having made the leap to Jazzercise instructor seven years ago.
This fall, Amar took another leap, to buy the Port Angeles Jazzercise franchise from longtime instructor Robyn Caynak. Adding Caynak and Andrea Piper’s Port Angeles classes to hers in Sequim, Amar created Peninsula Jazzercise. Between the two studios, 16 sessions are offered in any given week.
“The transition is going pretty well; I have a number of people now crossing over between the two facilities, which they can do for their one-price ticket,” Amar said this week.
For a joining fee of $25 to $50 and a monthly rate of $43 to $52 depending on length of commitment, her customers can take Jazzercise — here, elsewhere in the United States and across the world.
Amar is one of 7,800 instructors leading 32,000 classes in 32 nations, according to Jazzercise.com. That’s compared with Zumba’s 140,000 locations in 85 countries, according to Zumba.com.
Zumba, created in 2001 by Colombian trainer Beto Perez, has taken the dance-exercise party idea to new heights. But Amar will take Jazzercise any day — and she’s determined to grow her business. She took a break, though, to talk about how a French teacher from metropolitan Puget Sound became a
fitness maven in rural Clallam County.
Amar was born in Everett, grew up in Lynnwood and then lived in Edmonds. Her sister lived over in Bothell and noticed one day that her United Parcel Service delivery man was nice-looking, charming — and French.
Amar’s sister was married and pregnant at the time. And this delivery man, Pierre, was a jokester, so he asked, “Do you have a sister?”
“Yes, I do. And she speaks French,” was the answer. Fact was, her sister Anne had a degree in French from the University of Washington.
Pierre and Anne were set up on a blind date. As of this month, they have been husband and wife for 25 years, and have raised three children.
Anne Amar worked as a high school French teacher and as a travel agent, then decided to stay home when her kids were little. She’d gained that weight and was seeking a sustainable way to take it off and stay healthy.
“I have heart disease in my family on both sides,” she said.
And since Amar had always loved moving to music, Jazzercise felt good on more than just the physical level.
These classes offer something other than the cardio workout, the weight training and the stretching. It’s the camaraderie that brings people back, Amar believes.
Trisa Chomica, a devoted Jazzerciser, agreed. She’s been going to Caynak’s classes in Port Angeles for six years, and kept going even after she took a fall, while vacationing in Spain, that injured her foot and wrist.
“I take it slow,” said Chomica. “I just modify the steps, and Robyn will show alternate steps to accommodate high or low impact, and encourage people to work at their own pace.
“She always says, ‘Whose workout is it?’”
For Chomica, Jazzercise is her “dance fix,” with weight-lifting added in. The classes are charged with positive energy — from the music and the friendships that have developed.
Jazzerciser Ruth Welch attended an 8:30 a.m. class in Port Angeles recently. She seemed to know most of the women there. When asked why she’s kept coming to class — since 2002 — she simply said, “I love to dance.” Welch is 87.
Amar, for her part, researched the age demographics in Sequim and Port Angeles when she considered purchasing the franchises. She found women’s ages lean upward here, and sure enough her classes reflected this. A couple of her most enthusiastic Sequim students are in their 70s, and many students in their 50s and 60s.
“They are young at heart,” Amar says with a smile, “and they all move it out.”
The Jazzercise company sends instructors a new DVD full of new songs every 10 weeks. Amar picks and chooses, leaning away from the harder-core hip-hop and from artists such as Pitbull. She enjoys the influx of fresh music and moves, as do her students.
“Change is good,” at least in your exercise classes, said Chomica. The turnover in songs and steps keeps the routine challenging to brain and body.
Amar wasn’t always the one to seize the microphone and hop onto the stage.
“I was very shy,” she recalls.
But at age 50, Amar decided it was time to start teaching. She found out that Jazzercise requires a multi-step process for certification, and monitors instructors yearly to make sure they’re teaching to corporate standards.
It took about a year before Amar felt comfortable in front of her class. Today, she’s fluid in her moves and her speech, reminding students to “tighten your core” and enjoy themselves.
Amar and her husband moved to the North Olympic Peninsula a little more than a year ago, to build a house where her grandfather, Stavros Fenerly, homesteaded some 100 years back. His farm was in the East Sequim Bay Road area, which is where the Amars now live.
She found out quick that Jazzercise was offered in Port Angeles, but that’s a 40-minute drive each way. Amar approached the Aspire Academy of Expressive Arts, the music and dance school in Carlsborg and got Jazzercise added to the menu there. She now teaches four classes weekly at Aspire and fills in now and then in Port Angeles.
Purchasing the franchise is a risk, of course, but it’s one that felt right to Amar.
“I’m new at being a business woman. Hello, French major,” she quipped.
Yet Jazzercise has seen her through a lot. Exercise, especially with a social component, is a way to ward off things like osteoporosis — and have fun in the process.
“It just makes you feel so good,” Amar said. “I totally believe in it.”
