Keep Your New Year's Resolution at Sun Outdoors Sarasota

Being active and involved is what the lifestyle at Sun Outdoors Sarasota is all about. That's why we have more than a hundred lifestyle activities available to keep you engaged and excited. Here you can pursue those interests you love, try new things and explore adventures you've always wanted to. Having that opportunity is reason guests choose to Sun Outdoors Sarasota and what keeps them coming back.

To fully enjoy it all, it's important to feel good and to be fit because to be truly happy, you've got to be healthy. So we're determined to help you achieve a level of fitness that helps you better embrace all that Sun Outdoors Sarasota offers. And that starts at our award-winning Indoor Fitness Pool and Wellness Center.

If you've already been to the Wellness Center, you know it has an incredible number of features, from an Olympic-size pool and the various workout and exercise rooms to its sauna, steam and locker rooms. That's what makes it Sarasota's premier place to get in shape.

This year, we're introducing a whole new set of lifestyle and fitness programs – and people – we believe will have a real, tangible effect in helping you get in shape and make you want to stay in shape for the rest of your life. You won't experience anything intimidating, just a warm, welcoming atmosphere with friendly, accessible, easy-to-talk-to trainers and instructors, all with a single purpose - to help you get where you want to be, whether it's running a marathon or just playing with a grandchild.

It all kicks off mid-January with Fun Fit, a 60-day program for homeowners that promises to turn lives around. We'll gather everyone who wants to participate in the program – and we hope that's all of our residents and guests – at the Wellness Center and do an assessment of your Body Mass Index (BMI), body fat, lean body mass, and lean muscle distribution on our state-of-the-art Inbody machine, then inform you of what your optimum body fat should be and help you plan how to get there with Fun Fit.

Fun Fit is a weekly schedule of what you need to accomplish each week over the 60-days of the program to achieve your goals. Each week's schedule will include five assignments to be completed. When a goal is met, you'll receive a stamp. At the conclusion of the program, participants will vote on those folks they believe have shown the most effort and made the greatest strides toward meeting their goals. Winners will be eligible to win various prizes.

We've also added thousands of new Fitness On-Demand classes that will run in the Fitness Studio. We will have regularly scheduled classes from 8 a.m. - 3 p.m. The idea behind all the tapes is to keep exercise fresh. Boring is the reason most people drop out of programs. We're not going to let that happen. And because there are so many tapes running throughout the day, we expect smaller crowds.

We'll also have instructional classes in each of our rooms: the strength room, the cardio loft and fitness studio. They will be held every two weeks for a half hour to 45 minutes and led by Wellness Center Manager Matt Blumer and our new team of personal trainers – more about them in a moment. These sessions will help ensure you're performing your exercises on the machines properly and safely so you get the best results. Matt has been a resident in the park for 15 years and has a Bachelor's Degree in Exercise Science from Life University.

A huge part of the program, and something entirely new, is the opportunity to work with a personal trainer. We've assembled a terrific team that includes Josh Norton, Sheri Clary, Alice Monsaert, and Marcy Yarborough. They'll work under the leadership of the remarkable Joey Perea, who came to national prominence as a teenage body builder in the 80's and who went on to win an incredible 24 bodybuilding championships.

He holds a degree in Food Science from the University of Florida so he'll be able to help you with diet as well as exercise, educating you on nutrition and the importance of making healthy choices. Joey's got quite an extraordinary background; he's been the personal trainer for some people you may have heard of: he got Russell Crowe into shape for his Oscar-winning performance in Gladiator, John Travolta for the film Broken Arrow, and Wesley Snipes for Passenger 57. And he's also helped sports stars like football Hall-of-Famer Andre Reed of the Buffalo Bills and baseball pitching great Orel Hershiser. You'll find he's super friendly and always ready to help.

We hope you'll make it a point to come by to meet Matt and the training team and to learn more about all the new things the Indoor Pool and Wellness Center will be offering this coming year. We want to make this the year you keep that New Years' resolution to get in shape and begin living a healthier life.