Pole dancing offers a pole-based exercise more effective than 1920s pole sitting, more energizing than pole vaulting, and more sensual than polenta. Exercise your polar skills with today's Groupon: for $20, you get a one-hour group pole preview fitness class at Aerial Dance Pole Exercise LLC in Appleton (a $40 value).

At Aerial Dance Pole Exercise, acrobatic students tone and hone muscles, coordination, and flexibility. Dancers of all skill and fitness levels improve core strength, arm strength, and posture on five 10-foot stainless-steel poles after warm-ups and core-conditioning exercises during the pole preview class. Lively tunes energize the private studio, closed to the rest of the gym, as pole pupils twist through muscle-chiseling moves such as spins, climbs, inverts, and hangs that meld into a heart-pumping cardio dance routine. During trickier moves, a cushy crash mat offers security to the vertical vixens twirling above by whispering words of encouragement.