Things to Do in Clovis

With a multitude of useful-and-creative class offerings for beginners and intermediate students alike, yogis of all levels can find a niche to suit their muscles and ligaments. Kick off the day with morning flow, defeat midday doldrums with a midday yoga session, or challenge your body and mind with an intermediate–Vinyasa class, among many others. A staff of veteran instructors helps visitors bend and flex in a relaxing, non-competitive environment that’s far more welcoming and accommodating than reality television shows like Last Yogi Standing.

Fig Garden's experienced instructors—all of whom are registered with the national Yoga Alliance or trained by independent schools in their areas of specialization—have been inching Fresnites toward enlightenment since 1998. The cozy, intimate studio focuses on the Iyengar style of hatha yoga, often employing props such as blocks, straps, and water-squirting boutonnières to aid participants of all ages and experience levels in maintaining poses suitable for Cubist figure-drawing classes. After a few classes, inflexible flexors will see an improvement in balance, an increase in core strength, and a newfound taffy-like bendability. In addition to stretching and burnishing a stiff soul-sack, hatha yoga focuses the mind and eases emotional tension caused by the continued inability to beat a cousin at pogs. Fig Garden's ongoing repertoire of small, drop-in classes ($15 each) ensure that greenhorn yogis and experienced gurus have many opportunities for individual attention.

Perfect Balance Yoga is an award-winning yoga studio that helps its members achieve and maintain a healthy body-and-spirit balance. Experienced yoga teachers instruct students in gentle and restorative yoga, Ashtanga, and Vinyasa yoga, with classes geared toward meditation, kids, and moms-to-be. Inside the Perfect Balance studio, students are soothed by the spare, spacious practice area and its welcoming warmth.

After traipsing deep into Fresno Regional Sports Complex, warriors breach the perimeter of Maximum Paintball, an expansive enclave spread throughout several obstacle-infested outdoor fields. Concrete blocks, wooden horses, and metal barrels populate Field1, and regulation barricades such as pyramids, cylinders, and Paul Bunyan's beanbags wait to be splattered with neon paint in other nooks. Maximum Paintball hosts traditional paintball games and some with slight variations, all overseen by referees unafraid to eject people for unsportsmanlike conduct. An observation area with awnings and picnic tables protects onlookers from stray pellets, and a supply store stays open seven days a week to equip sharpshooters with necessary accouterments.

At Fresno Fencing Academy, head coach and former Soviet and Ukrainian champion fencer, Vladimir Ostatnigrosh, distills his experience to foster a new generation of duelers within a 4,200-square-foot facility that boasts electric fencing strips, a fitness room with weight machines, and changing rooms. Ostatnigrosh invites students of all levels, aged 7 and older, to discover the art of parrying and thrusting, which nurtures self-discipline while bolstering the cardiovascular system and developing the skills necessary to retrieve stolen lunch money from Zorro. The academy’s classes, which range from introductory to competitive levels, cover the three Olympic fencing weapons: the foil, the épée, and the saber. Those expert swordsmen and swordswomen who have mastered the fencing rules and refrained from detonating any last-resort grenades during a match defend the academy’s robust reputation at local, regional, and national tournaments.

Everyone can buy up to five of today's Groupon (a total of 10 tickets), so round up ballpark fanatics of all ages for a Saturday-evening outing to the open-air Chukchansi Park, which plays host to the Fresno Grizzlies before they grow to the heights of gentle yet surprisingly man-sized San Francisco Giants. Backdropped by the downtown skyline, night games spring to life under a spectacular night sky. During slow innings or unusually long pop flies, take your anxious youngsters down for a few games at the park's Fun Zone, where kids can train like real-life baseball players by riding the carousel, rolling down the inflatable slide, and practicing in the pitching and batting zones.