Watsons Zumba tour returns to Klang Valley
WATSONS’ nationwide Zumba tour is making its way back to the Klang Valley, after bringing smiles to the faces of Zumba lovers and fitness enthusiasts across the peninsula.
Zumba is an aerobic fitness programme featuring movements inspired by various styles of Latin American dance and performed primarily to Latin American dance music.
Each class lasts for an hour and participants can expect to burn 500 to 1,000 calories per session, depending on its intensity.
The Watsons Zumba tour had
Apreviously made stops in Penang, Ipoh, Johor Baru, and Malacca ( above), drumming up interest for FTER nearly 20 years of working with wheelchair-bound youngsters, Mario Vigentini wanted to revolutionise their quality of life. This led him to invent a device that raises up users so they are face-to-face with those standing.
The Italian entrepreneur drew inspiration from the Segway – the twowheeled, self-balancing, electric vehicle that allows visitors to nip around cities without walking – and came up with the MarioWay, a hands-free, two-wheeled kneeling chair.
With its high seat, it allows users to do everything from ordering a coffee at a bar, to plucking a book off a high shelf.
The Italian government was so impressed by his invention that it proudly showed off the chair to the G7 transport ministers in June.
The aim was to create “a tool of social integration”, Vigentini told AFP at his headquarters in Bergamo.
The 45-year-old found working with young people with mental and physical disabilities “an extraordinary adventure”, but was disheartened by the prejudice they faced.
“At best, people approached them like a child,” he said, as if because they were sitting closer to the ground they were somehow more infantile.
Racking his brains for a way to change the situation, he came up with the idea of “trying to put an ergonomic seat – like those from the Nordic countries that were very fashionable in the 1990s – on a Segway”.
“Nine out of 10 people I talked to about this idea looked at me as if I came from another planet,” he said.
But he was persuaded to take the idea to a start-up competition in Naples in 2012 – and made it to the final.
Buoyed, he set up a team to study the ergonomics involved, and brought in a dozen disabled people as collaborators.
Users of traditional wheelchairs are the upcoming Watsons Move Your Body Zumba 2017 party, set to take place at Sunway Lagoon Surf Beach, Petaling Jaya, on Oct 21.
This Saturday, the Watsons Zumba tour makes its penultimate stop, at MyTown Shopping Mall in Cheras, Selangor, at 3pm.
On Sunday, the event ends with a bang at Sunway Velocity, Cheras, at 11am.
Lucky participants who decide to join in the fun stand a chance of walking away with Watsons Move Your Body Zumba 2017 tickets worth RM196.
For more, visit Watsons Malaysia’s official Facebook page.