Earlier this month, I attended the IDEA World Fitness Convention in San Diego. IDEA is a huge organization of fitness professionals. I found out about them after I got certified as a personal trainer through the American Council on Exercise, because ACE started sending me IDEA’s excellent magazine, the IDEA Fitness Journal.

For the last few months, every issue hyped the convention. Their marketing worked on me. I really wanted to go! I managed to get press credentials through my writing for Examiner.com.

The convention was, indeed, fabulous. More than 6,000 people attended sessions and/or wandered through the huge exhibition floor. The San Diego Convention Center was a lovely setting, as you could take a break and go for a walk along the bay. The convention center also had nice outdoor spaces when you needed to escape the climate-controlled interior.

Getting a Sense of Fitness Heritage

Since I knew nothing about IDEA, except what I’d read in their magazine, it was all new to me. But not to everybody else! IDEA has tons of diehard, long-time members. People were wearing old T-shirts from long ago IDEA conferences, and reminiscing about past fitness trends.

For the keynote speech, I got a second row seat beside Emma Luz Keenan of La Paz, Bolivia. She was a great tour guide to my first IDEA event, as she’s been a member from the organization’s earliest days. She told me about when she lived in Bakersfield, California in the 1980s, and would drive to Los Angeles to take exercise classes with Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons. Now Emma owns the Body and Soul Health and Fitness Studio inLa Paz, but comes to California to visit family members.

Jane Fonda was on everybody’s mind, as she was there in person to receive the Jack LaLanne Award for her contributions to the fitness industry. Elaine LaLanne, Jack’s widow, presented the award. But first, she did ten push-ups. Which was pretty darn inspiring to see from an 86 year-old woman.

Talking to Emma, listening to Jane Fonda, and watching IDEA founders Kathie and Peter Davis conduct their 30^th anniversary slideshow, well, it gave me a nice feeling about the history of the fitness industry. Even though I’ve been teaching yoga in a gym for nine years, it’s only in the last couple – since starting to teach Spinning and sub other classes and getting certified as a personal trainer – that I really began to see myself as working in the fitness industry. But, yeah. I do. And that’s a good place to be.

Meeting Clothing Designers

Via Privé

I wear fitness apparel six or seven days a week. But I think this was the first time I ever had the chance to meet people who design it. At the IDEA convention, I got to talk to several. Vesna Markgrafa of Via Privé was very sweet and accommodating. Her line of yoga pants are named after flowers. She showed me her favorite, the orchid. They also have a lovely program where they donate a garment to a poor child in India for every piece they sell.

 

Glyder

Glyder  Apparel is trying to make high quality fitness clothes affordable to a wider audience. Designer Lauren Tolford, who is a surfer and a yogini, told me she designs what she wants to wear: clothing that’s comfortable and feminine as well as good quality.

Their $39 Endurance tank and $56 Mantra Pants cost more than you’d pay if you shop at Ross Dress for Less but a lot less than Lululemon.

 

Twete Bird

When friends Sarah Judd and Heather Ellison both qualified for the Boston Marathon in 2010, they had to figure out how to raise money for their trip. “We were two girls sitting around before a race, braiding our hair and trying to figure out what to do with all the layers,” Sarah said. They hit on the idea of making headbands. These are adjustable and lined with velvet to prevent slippage.

Both Sarah and Heather are mothers of four who live in Springville, Utah. I only talked to Sarah at the IDEA Convention, because Heather was home birthing child number five. According to Sarah, their headbands have caught on with the running crowd, but the idea of so much sparkle is still a little new to fitness instructors. This was their first fitness convention. Their company name, Twete Bird, comes from the very blonde Heather’s childhood nickname.

Their headbands are machine washable but shouldn’t be put in the dryer. “They hold up in wet weather,” Sarah said. “I’ve been totally rained on and I sweat them to death.”

I couldn’t resist buying two of their most glittery headbands. As one of my yoga students stated, my bronze glitter headband looks like a tiara you can wear to the gym.

Vertical Edge

Tia Robinson, owner of Vertical Edge, was one of my favorite people I met at the IDEA convention. Tia started taking pole dancing classes in Atlanta a few years ago, but her regular workout clothes made her slip off the pole. The secret to pole dancing success, she told me, is skin to pole contact. “Since I couldn’t find what I was looking for,” she said, “I decided to make it.” Did she have a design background? Nope. “Other than I’m a girl and like to put clothes together,” she said. “But you only live once, so what the hell!”

That’s the kind of attitude I like!

Tia and her fellow poler Aisha Bates were womanning the Vertical Edge booth. Aisha said pole dancing is a different type of workout that leaves you feeling confident and sexy.  She enjoys being in the atmosphere of supportive women that she finds at pole dance studios.

Tia is also committed to showing polers of various shapes and sizes in her advertising, which is also the kind of inclusive attitude I love to see. Go Tia!

 

Learning about New Class Formats

There were tons of different fitness class formats offered at IDEA. As a member of the press, I wasn’t allowed to participate in them, with only a couple of exceptions.

Core Stix

The folks at Core Stix invited me to come to a promo class, which I did. Core Stix is a workout system that consists of a platform with removable, weighted sticks that you can arrange at various angles. There’s about a gazillion cardio and resistance exercises you can do on them. They’re kind of funny looking, especially when you see a whole roomful for a group fitness class. But it was really fun, and gave a good workout. It was first developed for individual home use, but Core Stix hired fitness expert Jill Brown to devise a group exercise application for the contraption. She was knowledgeable and lively and did a great job leading us through the exercises.

Bombay Jam

 I was also taken with the women from Bombay Jam. This is a pre-choreographed dance fitness program done to Bollywood music. It’s an offshoot from the Mona Khan Company, an Indian dance troop in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to teaching classical Indian dance, they came up with this fitness application 2 ½ years ago. Mostly they teach it in Indian community centers and dance studios around Cupertino and Sunnyvale, but they also have a few classes at a gym in Fremont. Now they’re looking towards expanding into other markets. They have a teacher certification coming up in September. At the IDEA convention they all looked beautiful in brightly colored tanks and black fitness harem pants, and they’re great dancers.

U-Jam

U-Jam Fitness was another Bay Area dance fitness format making its IDEA debut. Based on urban hip hop, they’ve been tearing up Bay Area 24 Hour Fitness clubs. About 25 of their crew came to San Diego, where they participated in high energy demos and socializing. They were super cute and friendly, and even indulged my wish for a group photo. That’s Susy C, U-Jam founder, in the middle.

There’s a lot more fun and interesting fitness products I could mention, but this post is already getting pretty long. Suffice it to say, I highly recommend going to next year’s IDEA convention.

 

If you want to read more of my IDEA coverage, check out my Examiner articles here.