Mermaids are usually the stuff of legends, but at the Newport-Mesa Family YMCA, a popular water aerobics class transforming area residents into mermaids and mermen on a daily basis is always happy to induct new members.
Offering classes six days a week, the facility’s Deep Water Aquafit program is a draw to Y members looking to cool down while engaging in a form of physical fitness that’s easy on the body but still offers a rigorous workout.
Suspended on the surface of deep water by flotation devices, students receive all the benefits of a traditional workout — flexibility, heart health, endurance and stress release — with none of the impacts associated with a gravity-based regimen.
But in recent years the class has also become a regular rendezvous for a group of water-fitness devotees who call themselves the Mermaids and who’ve formed a special bond that reaches far beyond the parameters of any YMCA pool.