ALBANY — Though the Arbor Hill Community Center’s blue and yellow gymnasium is classic American atmosphere, Olivia Frempong’s Tuesday night Ghanaian Zumba-style class, LivFit Afrobeats, is wholeheartedly West African.
Fitness
Afrobeats exercise class moves Arbor Hill Community Center
Olivia Frempong, the proprietor of LivFit, leads her Afrobeats and Afropraise Zumba class at Albany’s Arbor Hill Community Center.
Jim Franco/Times Union
“When you walk through these doors, this is an environment where you can shake off all your stress and just have fun for an hour,” Frempong said.
The energy of the class is established as soon as the speaker starts bumping Afrobeats, which makes it nearly impossible to stand still.
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Any self-consciousness a dancer might feel is drowned out by the music, which Frempong describes as soul, jazz, rhythm and blues mixed with traditional African vibes.
When the class begins at 6 p.m., there are around eight of us — half are new. But as the beats flow, more and more people trickle in until the gym is warmed by over 20 people — ranging from 6-year-old kids to 60-year-olds — moving to the beat.
The class starts with participants marching in place and builds from that.
Frempong emphasizes that her class, which she leads alongside her 12-year-old daughter, Gabby, is for all abilities and sizes, encouraging those who aren’t confident in their dancing abilities.
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“If you can’t follow all the dance movements that’s OK, but just march in place,” Frempong said. “Have fun and be the best marcher there is in the room.”
Frempong was inspired to create LivFit 413 LLC in 2019, though her fitness journey started years prior. In 2012, Frempong gave birth to twins. She already had an 18-month-old.
At a postpartum doctor’s appointment, the doctor told her she had high blood pressure. As a breastfeeding mother of three, Frempong understood why. She questioned when the doctor’s first instinct was to prescribe her medicine.
“It just didn’t sit well with me that my first appointment to the doctor, I’m already being prescribed medications,” Frempong said.
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Frempong said she prayed and asked God to help her do the right thing. She chose not to take the medication.
Instead, she started by running a block and slowly increasing the increments until becoming a full-blown “running fanatic.” Frempong founded the Albany chapter of Black Girls Run in 2016. To date, she’s run eight marathons and is preparing to run the Boston Marathon in April 2025.
As part of her running in the Boston Marathon, she’s raising funds for the Herren Project, an addiction recovery nonprofit. Frempong has worked for 12 years as a clinical social worker and supervisor at St. Mary’s Hospital in Troy, working with people battling drug and alcohol addiction.
In 2017, Frempong earned her certification to teach Zumba, a popular dance fitness program. While taking a break from marathons in 2019, her friends encouraged her to take her love of dance and create a fitness program. Rather than teach the same Zumba curriculum, Frempong put a cultural twist on the exercise style.
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“I’m from Ghana, West Africa,” Frempong said. “I like sharing my rich, beautiful culture with the people.”
Tabitha Johnson has been attending the class since February. For her, the atmosphere and the lack of judgment is what keeps her coming back — and has inspired her to bring more people to the class.
The Tuesday night class has become a recurring social and fitness activity for Johnson and her co-workers from the Department of Motor Vehicles, three of whom are with her on this particular night.
“You don’t feel the pressure to perform everything,” Johnson said. “You don’t feel like you failed once you left, as long as you moved.”
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Johnson said that Frempong’s support continues outside of class, as she posts encouraging content on her Facebook group and Instagram and will reach out and check in when she notices regulars skipping class.
The weekly class being free is an added incentive, Johnson said. Frempong also teaches in Albany at the YMCA and at Push Fitness.
Frempong’s goal is to keep people moving, which she said is particularly important this time of year.
“When winter comes, people fall into depression because it’s dark out and nobody wants to move,” Frempong said. “My mission this winter is to just keep people moving.”
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Accompanying her Afrobeats, Frempong also incorporates Afropraise in her workout. She calls it faith fitness ministry, with the goal of motivating people of all fitness abilities and sizes. It’s subtle enough that if you’re agnostic, like me, you can still enjoy it.
At the end of the class, Frempong prays, “It’s by God’s grace we made it through the day, and by his grace we’ll finish the year strong.”
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – Finding time to work out as a mom with young kids can be a challenge in itself, especially when you’re new to an area and don’t know where to start. However, a new fitness option strolled into Sioux Falls today. iStroll offers moms the chance to work out and meet other moms all while their kids can play or even join alongside them.
iStroll is a national organization that has more than 35 locations in the country but this is the first time one opened in South Dakota. It’s a full body workout that incorporates dumbbells, body weight, and jogging strollers when the weather’s nice.
“I found iStroll in Oklahoma and fell in love,” said Kelsi Supek who started the affiliate in Sioux Falls. “We made friends. It became our entire social network. The kids loved it and then we moved to Arizona during COVID. And all the moms were stuck at home. They were inside with our kids and lonely, honestly. And we were like, why can’t we start an iStroll and be out at the parks with the kids every day? And it took off.”
When Supek moved to Sioux Falls, she was encouraged by her family to start an affiliate and own it herself.
“Gym daycares did not work out for my children,” said Supek. “I would get 10 minutes into a class and then I’d have that person trying to knock outside the yoga studio going, Can I have Kelsey and her kids screaming in daycare? And it just didn’t work for us. So at iStroll they could be with me or I could be breastfeeding the baby as I was teaching in class.”
Classes are planned to continue each Wednesday and Friday at We Rock the Spectrum and First Presbyterian Church. For a full schedule for January and February, you can look at their Facebook. The first class is also free and memberships are for the whole family.
“Letting the kids see you work out is, it’s similar to homeschooling where like, you know, how are they going to love working out if they don’t see you working out,” said Kelly Jardeleza, a stay-at-home mom of three kids. “Whereas at other gyms they put them in a room and they don’t get to watch you. And how are you going to inspire them if they’re not watching you do it?”
Copyright 2026 Dakota News Now. All rights reserved.
There’s no bad time to take a more active interest in your health, but the new year, for lots of us, feels like a fresh start. Maybe you’re planning to sign up for a 10k or finally have a go at bouldering, eat a bit better or learn to swing a kettlebell. Maybe you want to keep up with your grandkids — or just be a little bit more physically prepared for whatever life throws at you.
To help things along, Guardian Live invites you to a special event with public health expert Devi Sridhar, journalist and author Mariella Frostrup, and health and fitness columnist Joel Snape. They’ll be joining the Guardian’s Today in Focus presenter Annie Kelly to discuss simple, actionable ways to stay fit and healthy as you move through the second half of life: whether that means staying strong and mobile or stressing less and sleeping better.
To make the whole event as helpful as possible, we’d love to hear from you about what you find most challenging — or confusing — when it comes to health and exercise. What should you actually be eating, and how are you going to find the time to make it? What sort of exercise is best, and how often should you be doing it? Is Pilates worth the effort — and should we really all be drinking mugfuls of piping hot creatine?
Whether your question is about exercise, eating, or general wellness, post it below and we’ll put a selection to our panel on the night.
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Jan 6 (Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday that it will limit regulation of wearable devices and software designed to support healthy lifestyles, issuing new guidance to clarify its regulatory approach.
The guidance, along with comments from FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, adds to existing policy that classifies low-risk wellness tools, such as fitness apps and activity trackers that encourage exercise, as non-medical devices exempt from stringent regulation, provided they do not make claims related to disease diagnosis or treatment.
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“We have to promote these products and at the same time, just guard against major safety concerns,” Makary said in an interview with Fox Business about artificial intelligence software such as ChatGPT, adding that “if people are looking up a symptom on an AI-based tool, let’s have that conversation when they come in to see their doctor or do a virtual visit.”
Shares of continuous glucose monitor manufacturers Abbott (ABT.N), Medtronic (MDT.N) and Dexcom (DXCM.O) closed between 1% and 4% higher. U.S.-listed shares of fitness smartwatch maker Garmin (GRMN.BN) ended nearly 3% higher.
“We want to let companies know, with very clear guidance, that if their device or software is simply providing information, they can do that without FDA regulation,” Makary told Fox Business.
“The only stipulation is if they make claims of something being medical grade … like blood pressure measurement. We don’t want people changing their medicines based on something that’s just a screening tool or an estimate of a physiologic parameter.”
Last year, the FDA issued a warning letter to fitness band maker WHOOP, saying its blood-pressure insights feature blurred the line between wellness and medical devices by estimating systolic and diastolic values used to diagnose hypertension.
The agency also sent out a broader warning to consumers about the risks posed by unauthorized devices.
Reporting by Puyaan Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Henderson and Sherry Jacob-Phillips
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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