North Aurora, IL Health and Fitness

Today's Groupon gets you and a golf buddy 18 holes on the difficult Tamarack Golf Course in Naperville for only $50. Each Groupon is good for two people to play an 18-hole round together, so get a pair and a foursome together to hit the lynx for the price of a 2.6-some (meaning it's up to a 62% discount—weekday rounds are $55, weekends are $65). Golf with friends is the best kind of bonding; there's nothing like being out in the open air, hearing the wind blow through the beautiful old trees lining Tamarack's well-groomed fairways, and refusing to grant your compadres mulligans. The satisfaction of a well-played hole is amplified by one's sadistic enjoyment of your partner's three-shot adventure in the woodsy rough.

Developed by Jill Dailey McIntosh, The Dailey Method is a challenging one-hour program that combines ballet barre work, stretching, core-conditioning, and orthopedic exercises to tone and lengthen bodies. Improve posture, endurance, and strength as muscles grow supple, soft edges firm up, and your sense of physical well-being grows like a Grinch's heart at Christmas. The Dailey Method takes a mindful approach to wellness—its workouts are safe and effective for people of any fitness level, including pregnant women and those recovering from an injury. Check out the Chicago or La Grange schedules for beginning and intermediate class times offered every day, and call ahead to schedule. Participants can use their Groupon for single classes ($20 each), toward any class package, or toward a one-month unlimited pass ($100+). Students should wear comfortable clothing that doesn't restrict movement, alignment, or celebratory robot dancing at the conclusion of class. Locker rooms with showers are available to freshen up after your ultra-workout, so you can scrub off the old you.

Exercisers burn up to 600 calories during Jazzercise, Inc.’s 60-minute total-body workouts, which meld moves from diverse realms such as jazz dance, kickboxing, and yoga. Set to a medley of popular tunes, sessions are open to all skill levels and start off with a gentle warm-up before 30 minutes of cardio, strength training, and a closing stretching segment. The discontinuation of the Nobel Prize in Jazzercise ensures a noncompetitive class atmosphere, and whippersnappers aged 4–12 can get in on the fun during Juniors Jazzercise classes.

Instructors at Hot Yoga Naperville—formerly Bikram Yoga Naperville and bFit Yoga—rely on premium workout equipment unlike anything else on the market—the human body. Using nothing but movement, they help students to strengthen their cores and improve their endurance through a variety of yoga classes, including hot yoga, power yoga, vinyasa yoga, and energetic ashtanga yoga. Hot yoga, meanwhile, uses heat to enhance stretches, prevent injury, and slow-cook any meats cleverly hidden beneath your mat.

Kristin was nervous before her first pole-dancing class. Sure, she’d spent years as a fitness specialist with a background in classical dance, but she was also working as the volunteer director at her church. What would people think? At her first turn around the pole, however, her fears vanished. “I felt like a goddess and an acrobat,” she says.

Today, Kristin is a certified pole instructor, a master trainer for Pole Move, Inc, and a member of the Pole Fitness Association. Inside her 3,400-square-foot studio, she works alongside 16 PFA-certified instructors to teach women body acceptance through pole dancing. More than 3,000 female students so far have sampled the studio's liberating, confidence-boosting classes. There's a broad selection of class types, including eight stages of pole dancing, burlesque, aerobic classes, and core conditioning. Each class caps attendance at 10 students to ensure instructors know everyone’s name and favorite sandwich, and that they can keep an eye out for safety and technique.

Several times a day, students flock to the 105-degree studio of Bikram Yoga St. Charles, striking confident poses under the direction of instructors who have completed Bikram Choudhury's intense nine-week training program. Each 90-minute class helps students find inner peace and outer health as they sweat out toxins, lengthen muscles, and find respite from packs of predatory hockey players. The studio welcomes students of all abilities, as the balmy heat helps even the tightest of tendons sink into Bikram’s 26 postures and two breathing exercises.