Until the invention of dance, history was littered with failed attempts to make exercise fun, including high-impact games of Old Maid and gym equipment made entirely of Lincoln Logs. Build a fun, new-fashioned fitness routine with today’s Groupon: for $20, you get eight Zumba classes at AKR Academy in Ripon (a $40 value). All new AKR clients also receive one additional free class, for a total of nine classes.

AKR Academy’s martial-arts and fitness classes fine-tune physiques using fun and effective workouts held in a positive, family-friendly environment. Incorporating principals of interval training with Latin dance steps and hip-hop beats, the one hour, high-energy Zumba class leads students through an easy-to-follow routine that torches calories and shrinks rebellious waistlines without the use of old-timey corsetry or magic-bean-soup diets. Appropriate for fitnessiers of any age, shape, or size, Zumba lets practitioners prance away pounds to rhythms from around the world, from merengue, salsa, and mambo to calypso cadences and excerpts from Kenny G's brief divergence into reggae.

Classes, which typically include 5 to 25 students, are scheduled Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 8:45 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. or Monday and Thursday nights from 6:40 p.m. to 7:40 p.m. The studio’s large windows let sweaty shakers move to the beat while basking in the beauty of natural light, improving moods and triggering the fat-blasting process of photosynthesis.