Other highlights of my two days at the IDEA world fitness convention include:

• Seeing the U-Jam Fitness crew! I met them last year at IDEA. Based out of the Bay Area, this gang of hip hop aficionados are some of the friendliest people at the convention. And I love how supportive they are of the other dance fitness programs. Fun to see them out on the demo dance floor supporting WERQ. And I was thrilled to get to participate in their demo this year. They do a fabulous job of getting a bunch of their instructors and/or students (I wasn’t sure which) to show up at the convention wearing their red/white/black urban threads and baseball caps. And I was happy to hear they’ve expanded into more states and countries since I met them in 2012.

U-Jammers and others supporting WERQ Fitness on the demo dance stage

• Meeting the Fit Bodies people. They match up fitness professionals with teaching vacations at resorts. I’ve been in their database and on their email list for a couple of years, but still haven’t gone on one of their teaching vacations. Nice to match a face with names from email.

The dance folks seem to have the best time. Here’s the Zumba stage again.

• Terry Eckmann’s “Healthy Aging Survival Kit” workshop. Terry was very positive and got everybody to enthusiastically participate in all kinds of silly exercises involving massaging negativity out of each other’s backs, playing patty cake and dancing in our chairs to “New York, New York.” While that probably sounds entirely ridiculous, remember the context: more than 8,000 people who are supposed to be extremely fit and healthy. That can put some pressure on you. And I’m sure I was not the only fitness pro in the room who spent part of the weekend trying not to fret about all those other fitness pros who were younger, thinner and buffer. So Terry’s workshop came at a perfect time. Her main message was that we create our neural pathways and all our habits by our attitudes. She emphasized that we are guaranteed only one human relationship in this life, and that’s with ourselves. So it’s essential to stop negative self-talk and thinking and instead motivate and inspire ourselves. “If we said the things to other people that we say to ourselves they would not be our friends,” she pointed out. Ah, yes. That’s what it’s about. Being a friend to ourselves, and helping our students and clients be friends to themselves. Now there’s something to take home and work on, more than any exercise, product or piece of fitness gear.