Directed Activities
Directed activities are those that take place in a room, following the indications of a professional instructor who is qualified to teach that specific sport discipline.
In the following paragraph, we will describe the origins of this kind of activities:
Nowadays, everybody knows the existence of aerobics, but not so many people know its history. The creator of this sport practice is A. Keneth Cooper, a United States Air Force doctor who became a Lieutenant Colonel. When he was researching methods to improve training and physical preparation of the members of the US Marine, he developed a program of physical activities. He published them in 1968, in his book called Aerobics. Later, he published some other works related to his first research, like The New Aerobics in 1970 for middle-aged people; or Aerobics for Women, in collaboration with Jackie Sorensen, which was aimed to keep the wives of the military soldiers of the US air force in shape. Most of them were staying at the US military base of Puerto Rico.
The system he developed was rapidly applied to all people involved in fitness training, firstly in the United States and later in the whole world. Aerobics’ growth and the spread of its multiple physical and psychological benefits exceeded expectations. It is estimated that, already in 1979, there were approximately 50000 people “hooked” to this new sport in the United States. Some years later, with the spread of music video clips of famous artists like Jane Fonda, the number of practitioners multiplied and reached 160000 people. The media support of this activity had great importance for its success.
The evolution which has experimented from those dates has been impressive, and several new varieties of directed group activities of this discipline have appeared in the last decades.
They can be classified in four main groups
- Choreographed activities, mainly related to dance and dancing.
- Toning activities, choreographed or not.
- Boxing activities, based on punches and kicks in the air.
- Gentle activities or mind-body, choreographed or not.
- Another group that deserves special mention is the indoor cycle, cardiovascular work that uses a fixed-gear bicycle with an inertia wheel and that is well received by all users of sports facilities for its “appearance” of simplicity and complete work, since pedaling technique requires a lot of practice and involvement with the activity.
