Rock Steady Boxing program beginning at the Woodland Senior Center
The Woodland Senior Center would like to announce a new program offering for seniors. The Rock Steady Boxing is an exercise program that uses a non-contact boxing-style curriculum to help combat symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
Interested participants must complete an intake assessment and receive a physician’s waiver in order to take the class. Intake assessment appointments can be made at the Woodland Senior Center Welcome Desk. The registration packet is available online at cityofwoodland.org/seniors. Intake assessment appointments can be made by calling the Woodland Senior Center Welcome Desk at (530) 661-2001.
Rock Steady Boxing is held on Mondays and Wednesdays (starting February 3) from 8:30-10:00 am at the Woodland Community & Senior Center, 2001 East St. in Woodland. The cost is $5 per month for Woodland residents and $6 per month for non-residents.The class is taught by local fitness professional Steve Bonnel.
More information about Rock Steady Boxing from rocksteadyboxing.org
Various studies in the 1980s and 1990s supported the notion that rigorous exercise, emphasizing gross motor movement, balance, core strength, and rhythm, could favorably impact range of motion, flexibility, posture, gait, and activities of daily living. More recent studies, most notably at Cleveland Clinic, focus on the concept of intense “forced” exercise, and have begun to suggest that certain kinds of exercise may be neuro-protective, i.e., actually slowing disease progression.
Rock Steady Boxing clients attest, and academic institutions, such as University of Indianapolis and Butler University, are reporting and documenting the improved quality of life among the boxers. Discovery of a cure may be many years away but in the last seven years, there is evidence that progress is made in all stages of the disease by those participating in the RSB program.
Rock Steady Boxing, is the first boxing program of its kind in the country, was founded in 2006 by former Marion County (Indiana) Prosecutor, Scott C. Newman, who is living with Parkinson’s. Rock Steady Boxing initially began through the friendship of two men, Scott Newman and Vince Perez, after Scott had been diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s at the age of 40. Refusing to let his friend go down without a fight, Vince turned to his experience as a Golden Gloves boxer to design a program that attacks Parkinson’s at its vulnerable neurological points. His intuitive insight is now proven to have merit through an increasing body of medical research. Realizing that their experience might be replicated for others, Scott and Vince founded Rock Steady Boxing as a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization. As word of this unique program spread and the demand for the classes increased, Rock Steady Boxing created classes to meet the fitness levels at all stages of Parkinson’s – from the newly diagnosed to those who had been living with it for decades plus.