Things To Do In Parker

Jessica Pickering brings more than 12 years of horse-showing experience to each hunter, jumper, and eventing lesson she conducts. Using the tenets of dressage as an overarching theme, Jessica starts students off with flat lessons that focus on horizontal riding techniques before moving on to vertical jumps and activating the horse wings for aerial flights. Once students are comfortable galloping with their steed, they can begin jumping and competing. Each class takes place on the saddles of Venus and Miss Roulette, two highly trained horses that are great for beginners and kids.

The pole maestros at Mile High Pole Club integrate floor-to-ceiling poles, chair props, and flirtatious dance moves into fun, empowering workouts. The dedicated instructors offer classes with names such as Pole Vixens, Chairlates, and Belly Dancing, teaching students to spin, whirl, and slide on poles like jousting knights gone wild. The Combolicious class lets indecisive students try out a blend of chair- and pole-based dance moves, and the male-friendly Pole Trix & Play gives Y-chromosomed dancers a place to learn. All classes featured in the schedule run 55 racy minutes each and require class-specific fitness attire.

On 10 a.m. on the first day of 2013, City Park's Great Lawn will fill with people ready to start the year off not with a resolution, but a commitment—a commitment to a healthy lifestyle. They'll run, walk, or jay-walk through the park and Marconi Drive on the flat, fast course, which it circles back to the Great Lawn where they started. After the race, runners can stick around for a post-race party to celebrate a successful first morning of the New Year.

In more than 30 cities across the nation, other runners will be participating in similar events as part of a movement that aims to stymie the rising rates of obesity and inaction in the United States.

It’s all about personalization at Fitness together. Here, certified personal trainers guide clients of all skill levels through motivating one-on-one and small-group training sessions designed to meet goals loftier than a giraffe’s basketball hoop. To help their charges torch calories and tone muscles as efficiently as possible, the trainers customize programs to individual goals and incorporate evidence-based training methods, such as intervals, tempos, and fartlek, into each fitness regimen. In-studio sessions take place in a studio flush with energizing green walls and functional training tools such as medicine balls, kettlebells, and TRX trainers.

Members at Curves, a fitness center designed exclusively for women, rotate around a circuit of hydraulic resistance machines designed to work with female bodies and promote weight loss, protect against osteoporosis, and deal with arthritis. An experienced trainer is always nearby to help to manage participants’ machine maneuvering and muscle making. Instead of fiddling with weight stacks and losing momentum, the hydraulic machines use participants' own body weight, fitness level, and aerodynamic water bottles to create resistance that matches abilities, decreasing the risk of soreness or injury. Because traditional lift-and-lower motions create bulky muscles, each machine uses push-and-pull motions to create toned, lean muscles perfect for crushing a grapefruit without looking like you can. Between each weight station lies a recovery board where ladies cool down while walking, jogging, or running in place to keep up momentum. With each workout warrior at a different station, the only competition that exists is with one's own burgeoning muscles.

The Wildlife Experience, one of the country's more aptly named museums, offers a chance to encounter members of various animal kingdoms and habitats through an uncommon combination of interactive exhibits, natural history, fine art, and documentary films. Once inside, explore a variety of permanent and not-so-permanent exhibits. Globeology, is a three-dimensional jaunt that takes visitors through biomes from wild Colorado to the barren, WiFi-less tundra. Frogs!: A Chorus of Colors, meanwhile, gives visitors eyewitness access to fifteen types of colorful and vocal anurans, offering young guests insight into what frogs do when not playing a banjo or being chased by a pig.