If there’s any Disney princess to be jealous of, it’s Ariel. Look at everything she’s got: she can breathe underwater, she’s got a fantastic voice, her BFF’s are a talking lobster and a cute flounder, Prince Eric (swoon) is totally into her…and that body. Perfectly toned, Ariel rocks a seashell bra and an enviable fin to boot. Why she gave all it up, we’ll never know. Land is overrated.
What we do know is that now we don’t have to be jealous of that fluttery, fantastic fin anymore, thanks to the new Mermaid Fitness classes held at San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado.
The classes are essentially water aerobics, but with a really cool fin made out of bathing suit material. “Hotel del Coronado fitness instructors will guide you through this 45-minute fusion of swimming, core, cardio and strength training set to upbeat music,” the description on the website reads.
As Cosmopolitan points out, the classes do give participants a good workout. According to Veronica Rohan, one of the instructors for Hotel Del Coronado’s Mermaid Fitness class, the fin forces swimmers to move their entire bodies in unison, activating abs, quads, and glutes more than regular, bipedal lap swimming does.
The classes aren’t crazy expensive, either — a forty-five minute session, including fin rental, costs twenty dollars, discounted to fifteen dollars for locals, and ten dollars for hotel guests. They take cards but don’t accept gadgets and gizmos aplenty. (Please send us the Pulitzer for that one.)
Don’t live near San Diego? The classes are starting to catch on elsewhere, both in the U.S. and, interestingly, in Denmark, home of The Little Mermaid author Hans Christian Anderson.
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If you’d rather save your money and just putter around in your own fin, you can find them for retail online, at around a hundred dollars a pop, or cheaper, depending on where you look. You might be the quirkiest one at the pool this summer, but no one will even care, once you start in with the singing. Just make sure to stay away from octopuses who offer sketchy trades in exchange for love.
