What is Zumba with Janice like? See for yourself in this new video…
Posted by ZumbaContraCosta on November 23, 2015
Posted in Exercise, Fitness | Tagged: free zumba class pleasant hill | Leave a Comment »
Posted by ZumbaContraCosta on September 9, 2015
September 9, 2015
Today, the United States Surgeon General issued a call to action to address major public health challenges such as heart disease and diabetes. Step It Up! The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Promote Walking and Walkable Communities articulates the health benefits of walking.
“Walking is the simplest way to add more physical activity into our everyday lives,” said Lawrence E. Armstrong, Ph.D., FACSM, president of the American College of Sports Medicine. “Research demonstrates numerous health benefits of walking and healthy eating, and ACSM supports this call to action to create healthier, more active communities in the U.S.”
“We know that an active lifestyle is critical to achieving good overall health. And walking is a simple, effective and affordable way to build physical activity into our lives.
The Surgeon General’s report discusses the health benefits of walking and calls on individuals to make walking a priority in their lives. Fewer than half of all U.S. adults get enough physical activity to reduce their risk of chronic disease, and only a quarter of high school students get the recommended amount. Physical inactivity contributes to heart and lung disease, diabetes and cancer, which account for 86% of our nation’s health care costs. Building walking into daily life can reduce disease and save money.
“We know that an average of 22 minutes a day of physical activity – such as brisk walking – can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease and diabetes,” added Dr. Murthy. “The key is to get started because even a small first effort can make a big difference in improving the personal health of an individual and the public health of the nation.”
For more information about the U.S. Surgeon General’s quest to get everyone walking, visit www.surgeongeneral.gov
To find out more about getting healthy with Janice’s Lose for Life program contact Janice@ZumbaContraCosta.com or at 415.518.2202.
Join the social media conversation on Twitter: @JLitvin #stepitup
Posted in Exercise, walking | Tagged: stepitup, Surgeon General, walking, wellness | Leave a Comment »
Posted by ZumbaContraCosta on January 4, 2015
Posted in Exercise, Fitness, Zumba | Tagged: 2015, Fitness, heart health, lose weight, New Year's Resolutions, summer, teens, walnut creek recreation, WalnutCreek, Zumba | Leave a Comment »
Posted by ZumbaContraCosta on November 1, 2014
Posted in Dance Fitness, Exercise, Fitness, Weight Loss, Zumba | Tagged: aerobis, cardio, Exercise, Fitness, Weight Loss, Zumba Pleasant Hill, Zumba Walnut Creek | Leave a Comment »
Posted by ZumbaContraCosta on September 21, 2014
Posted in Exercise, Fitness | Tagged: 24 Hour Fitness - Alamo, Janice Litvin, Zumba Alamo | Leave a Comment »
Posted by ZumbaContraCosta on January 29, 2013
When: Beginning Wear Red Day February 1st – March 12th
What: a 40-day activity challenge to get you moving more.
How: Bring at least $5 to any Zumba Contra Costa class during the first week of February and you will receive your 40-day activity challenge. Throughout the challenge you will receive motivational tips & recipes. All proceeds benefit the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign.
Raffle Prizes & Winners chosen & announced at one of 3 parties during the week of March 12th
Location: Every Zumba Contra Costa class
This Friday, February 1st is National Wear Red Day®, a day that kicks of the American Heart Association’s Heart Health Month and the Go Red for Women campaign. This campaign aims to educate and remind us that heart disease is the number one killer among women. Whether heart disease is inherited or not, the American Heart Association teaches us that there are several things we can do to protect ourselves, including eating healthy foods, getting our cholesterol checked, and of course, exercising. The U.S. Surgeon General recommends 150 minutes per week of high intensity exercise or 300 minutes, moderate intensity.
You may be asking yourself, “How can I motivate myself to exercise that much? I know I made the resolution to exercise more, but life just gets in the way. And, really, exercise is so boring.”
Here are three motivational tips to help you adhere to your exercise resolution.
#1 Find a physical activity you truly love. This is the most important step you can take. Try something new. There are so many options to choose from nowadays: Yoga, Pilates, Zumba Fitness, belly, ballroom, or salsa dancing, kick boxing, swimming, biking or hiking with the kids. If you don’t like gyms, no problem. Look in the Walnut Creek Recreation’s Program Guide (or your community center’s catalog). There are so many fun and interesting classes offered throughout the year.
#2 Be specific when making goals, and track your activity either on paper or with one of the new high tech pedometers that track everything from steps to calories to sleep. Seeing your accomplishments strengthens your resolve. Keep it simple so you will always have time to track.
#3 Positive Self-Talk. Being positive has profound effects on intentions and actions. Telling yourself you’re too tired to work out after a long day is an easy bad habit to make. But how about following up that thought with, “I always feel better after a workout and I will feel proud that I stuck with it.” Learning how to develop positive self-talk can have broad implications for other areas of your life.
One of the biggest tactics to adhering to an exercise program is motivation, motivation from within. Needing to lose weight or reduce cholesterol are examples of extrinsic motivation. In order to effect a change from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation, one needs only find and develop the motivator within. The three tips I have outlined above are three of the most important steps you can take to effect this change. And don’t forget to wear red on Friday. More information about this campaign can be found at GoRedforWomen.org.
This year to honor Heart Health Month and support the American Heart Association, I am launching Sporty for Forty, a 40-day activity challenge, described above. Questions: Janice@ZumbaContraCosta.com
Posted in American Heart Association, Exercise, Fitness | Tagged: exercise motivators, go red for women, heart disease, wear red day, Zumba Pleasant Hill, Zumba Walnut Creek | Leave a Comment »
Posted by ZumbaContraCosta on October 29, 2010
Over 90 people danced salsa, merengue, cumbia, reggaeton & belly dance last Saturday at Walnut Creek’s first ever Zumbathon benefitting Susan G. Komen for the Cure at Las Lomas High School. Did you know that breast cancer is the 2nd leading cause of cancer in women? Over $1,000 was raised for breast cancer research & awareness, while 6 instructors: Janice Litvin, Eduardo Vargas, Sheyla Moreno Culligan, Raquel Call, Nannette Vides & Debbie Wiesenthal, accompanied by Percussionist Extraordinaire, Roberto Rios led the 90+ men, mothers & daughters. A big thank you to our sponsors: Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Diablo Magazine, Target, Trader Joe’s Lafayette, & Allegro Copy+Print.
Posted in Breast Cancer, Cardio dance, Dance, Dance Fitness, Exercise, Fitness, Zumba | Tagged: breast cancer, Debbie Wiesenthal, Eduardo Vargas, Janice Litvin, Komen, Nannette Vides, Raquel Call, Sheyla Culligan, Zumba fitness, Zumba Walnut Creek, zumbathon | Leave a Comment »
Posted by ZumbaContraCosta on July 10, 2010
Loaded with red-hot dance steps, pulsating Latin rhythms and easy-to-follow routines, this invigorating dance-fitness “party” will have you movin’, groovin’ and shakin’ the weight off to the sexy, exotic rhythms of salsa, cumbia, samba, merengue and more! Work your body from head to toe with four DVDs and six exhilarating workouts that teach you all the basics and hit your favorite targets, like your core, thighs and abs. You also get maraca-like Toning Sticks to add some muscle to your body sculpting routines. Now’s the time! Get ready to “Join the Party” and see a whole new side of yourself!
Zumba Fitness Total Body Transformation System DVD Set includes: 1) Zumba Fitness Basics Workout; 2) Zumba Fitness 20-Minute Express Workout; 3) Zumba Fitness Sculpt & Tone Workout; 4) Zumba Fitness Cardio Party Workout; 5) Zumba Fitness Live! Workout; 6) Zumba Fitness Flat Abs Workout; 7) 2 Zumba Fitness Toning Sticks
Posted in Aerobics, Cardio dance, Dance Fitness, Exercise, Fitness, Gifts, Health, Heart Health, Lifestyle, Music, Sports, Weight Loss, Weight Management, Zumba | Tagged: Aerobics, beto perez, calorie burn, cholesterol, dance shoes, east bay dance, Fitness, flat abs workout, Health, heart, latin dance fitness, lose weight, music, Salsa, song, weight watchers, wellness, zumba concord, Zumba Contra Costa, zumba dvd, Zumba Lafayette, zumba music, Zumba Orinda, Zumba Pleasant Hill, Zumba Video, Zumba Walnut Creek | Leave a Comment »
Posted by ZumbaContraCosta on June 6, 2010
Today Janice of Zumba Contra Costa prepared walkers for the Weight Watcher Walk-it Challenge in Pleasant Hill (San Francisco’s East Bay area). Fleet Feet of Pleasant Hill hosted the walkers by supplying t-shirts, water, and healthy snacks. Starting at 7:30 a.m. Janice warmed and toned the 300 Weight Watchers’ muscles and prepared them for their 5K (3.1 miles) walk-it challenge around the town of Pleasant Hill in Contra Costa County. Everyone finished the walk thrilled and energized, while feeling their endorphin-rush.
Janice teaches Zumba Fitness classes and Zumbatomic (Kids’ Zumba) in Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill, Lafayette & Concord. Janice@ZumbaContraCosta.com
Posted in Aerobics, Cardio dance, Community building, Dance Fitness, diet, Exercise, family, Fitness, Health, Heart Health, husband-wife activities, Lifestyle, Music, Sports, Weight Loss, Weight Management, Zumba | Tagged: Aerobics, Beto, Cardio dance, concord, diet, east bay dance, Elena Summers, Exercise, Fitness, Fleet Feet, Health, heart, latin dance, low cholesterol, Marianne Benedetti, Pleasant Hill, Salsa, Walk-it Challenge, Walnut Creek, Weight Loss, weight management, weight watchers, Zumba | Leave a Comment »
Posted by ZumbaContraCosta on May 23, 2010
My great-grandfather moved from Jerusalem to Colombia at age 20 because he heard there were business opportunities there. He went from town to town selling textiles on horseback although he didn’t speak a word of Spanish.
When I was about 6, I had a watch that had a game on it. I loaned it to a classmate on weekends, and he gave me money in exchange. One weekend my mom me asked where my watch was. When I told her, she called the boy’s mother to apologize and made me return all the money. My father was proud. He said I invented renting.
It was a dangerous time in Colombia in the 1980s. Every time the government would pursue the drug dealers, they’d retaliate and bomb government buildings and public places. We’d hear the popping sounds at school. My dad owned a factory that made leather goods, and when I was 9 we were glad to live in the United States for six months while he opened a distribution center in Florida.
I moved back to the United States in 1994, and in 1998, I graduated from Babson College in Massachusetts with a B.A. in finance and information systems. Working as a management consultant for a while, I analyzed call centers for a bank to determine the effectiveness of its TV advertising. It was boring, but I learned about direct response marketing, which would come in handy later.
When I went home to Colombia to visit, my mother would rave about a fitness class she was taking with Alberto Perez, whom everyone calls Beto, that involved a dance routine set to Latin and international music.
In 1999, I created a business conference called Latin Venture with a partner, where Latin American entrepreneurs presented their business plans. I got companies like I.B.M. and Telefónica to sponsor it, and I lined up venture capitalists as speakers and panelists. We held the conference in Miami.
Then three partners and I created Spydre Labs, a business incubator for Latin American entrepreneurs with ideas for Internet businesses. We raised several million dollars and invested in the start-ups we created.
Then the tech bubble burst, funding dried up, and I had to let everyone go. I decided to return what remained of the investors’ money because my father always taught me that if you’re honest and respectful, it will come back to you tenfold.
My parents had moved to Miami by then, and I had dinner at their house that night. My mother suggested that I talk to Beto about starting a business related to his fitness routine. He had also moved to Florida and was giving fitness classes here.
He and I met and discovered that neither of us had any money. We decided to start a company anyway, and I asked Alberto Aghion, one of my best friends from childhood, to join us. We wanted to sell home fitness videos directly to consumers, so one night we set up on the beach and had a videographer film a fitness class. We started looking for joint venture partners for producing videos we could market on television.
Along with a TV infomercial, the home videos introduced our concept to the public, and when people called wanting to be trained as instructors, the company took off. Zumba Fitness is now in about 50,000 locations in 75 countries. This year we’re introducing a game for Nintendo Wii, Xbox and PlayStation.
I’ve learned that if you don’t take a risk, that’s a risk in itself. I’ve also learned that your customers are your boss. Our main customers are our instructors, who pay for training. They have their own community on our site, and I listen carefully when they tell me what we need to do in the future.
As told to Patricia R. Olsen. (Appeared in NY Times.com 5/21/2010)
Posted in Aerobics, Dance Fitness, entrepreneurs, Exercise, Fitness, Gifts, Health, Lifestyle, Music, Zumba | Tagged: alberto perlman, beto perez, beto perlman, cd, east bay dance, entrepreneurship, fitness industry, how to zumba salsa, latin dancing, music, Salsa, songs, zumba audio blast, Zumba Contra Costa, zumba dvd, Zumba fitness, zumba music cd, Zumba Walnut Creek | Leave a Comment »