Meet Our Instructor Team
Toni Howard
Jazzercise has been Toni’s chosen form of exercise for as long as she can remember and is what made her want to become an instructor when her and her husband moved to their forever home in Green Valley. Yep that means she became an instructor in her 50’s.
Toni is also the owner of the local jazzercise franchises and now also our new GV Fit Club. It’s been on her short bucket-list of dream items to open her own Jazzercise facility once she retired from her corporate life. That plan however changed during Covid when she saw that so many other instructors teaching various types of fitness in the area were still displaced from losing their locations. All were still struggling to keep their teams and classes together, dancing on rooftops, in parking lots, in garages, in parks near lakes, fighting the elements (are bugs an element?) well you name it!
So what started as a stand-alone Jazzercise facility, turned into a full spectrum studio offering all types of class fitness open to the entire community to enjoy. She’s so excited to have this space for all of those who share the same passion for group fitness either as as instructors or students.
Toni and her husband Wally absolutely love living in the Green Valley area. It’s such a sunny change from their previous home location in the Pacific Northwest. Their kids and grandkids love to come and visit and we love seeing some of them come to take her classes.
Join Toni throughout the week teaching Jazzercise here at GV Fit Club. Watch for the “newbie” Jazzercise classes. Great for beginners and those who just want to ease into exercise. She is also teaching Zumba Gold and is our substitute for Chair One as needed
Carol Kohler
Carol has been a Jazzercise instructor since 2008. She became an instructor in her 60's proving it's never to late to embrace your fitness goals with a commitment to herself and the community. She's been inspiring folks around here of all ages for about 15 years now (including myself as she recruited me to become an instructor and now owner).
She certified in Boulder Colorado and has taught classes in Colorado, Arizona and Texas. The coolest thing about her training to become an instructor was that she was trained by her daughter, Michelle who is a Jazzercise Corporate Training Evaluator. Most people assume that Carol trained her daughter - but nope - how cool is that? She loves to team teach with Michelle and they do just that when Michelle comes to town.
Carol used to be the Owner of our local satellite locations here but now is an Associate and loving a little more freedom.
Carol will be teaching for GV Fit Club Thursday mornings at 9am. She is the lucky one who will teach our inaugural class July 1. Come join her for a fun, low-impact Jazzercise class and meet her yourself.
Karen Baker
Karen Baker has lived and taught in Green Valley since 2010, having moved from Northern California. She is an AFAA/NASM Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Pilates and Yoga instructor who has been personal training, teaching classes and working in the fitness industry since 1983. She teaches, trains and works with clients in her own private fitness studio in addition to teaching cardio pump, yoga and pilates at various locations in the Green Valley area. Karen also holds a degree in Clinical Nutrition and Food Science and worked as a Registered Dietitian for many years.
Karen received her 500 hour advanced yoga training in the Iyengar style at The Yoga Room in Berkeley, CA. Karen has also completed advanced training in Restorative Yoga, Yin Yoga, Yoga for Healthy Aging, Yoga for Osteoporosis, and Trauma and the Mind-Body Relationship. As a devoted patriot, Karen is an active member of the Veteran’s Yoga Project and offers free classes to active military and veterans.
Karen’s passion for fitness, health and good nutrition is exemplified in her lifestyle. She loves to work with individuals of all levels and is dedicated to helping others achieve their own health and fitness goals. Her hobbies are yoga, cycling, cooking, and traveling. Karen is married and lives with her husband Harold, in Green Valley and has 3 grandchildren whom she adores and visits often in San Diego, CA.
Join Karen for her coed Yin Yoga classes Monday and Wednesday afternoons -which is a class where guys can hang out AND do yoga! Karen uses props (blankets, blocks, straps and bolsters) to help the body safely align and work in poses that would not otherwise be accessible. Join her and improve your balance and functional stability to support activities of daily living.
Debbie Stenson and Diana Makes
You might remember Diana and Debbie from their previous classes at Anamax Park and The Sahuarita Dance Center.
Debbie Stenson has been teaching yoga in the Sahuarita/ Green Valley area for 16 years. She started practicing yoga in 2000 because of herniated discs in her back. She retired from the state of Colorado in 2003 and bought a yoga studio. She and her husband Harley managed the studio until they moved to Arizona. Debbie has one son who teaches kickboxing in Denver.
Diana Makes has been a student of yoga since her 20’s. After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, she decided to delve even more deeply into her own practice, which led her to meeting Debbie Stenson. Thanks to Debbie’s encouragement, Diana began teaching her own classes at Anamax Park and in September/October 2013, she attended a 200-hour Hatha Yoga Teacher Training Intensive at 7 Centers Yoga Arts in Sedona. Diana has been an Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor for 26 years and taught many small business owners how to use QuickBooks to its fullest potential. Teaching is what she loves to do, and that is obvious when you attend one of her yoga classes. She also loves photography, exploring, blogging and golf.
They welcome all levels of yoga students as they encourage everyone to listen to their own body and practice at whatever level works for them. They believe “motion is lotion”!
Debbie and Diana teach every Tuesday and Thursday at 10AM.
Renee LeCours
Renee is a native Oregonian who moved to Sahuarita in 1999. She loves the desert and sun, not so much the heat. She is a pet parent for an extremely friendly poodle puppy named Teddy and an extremely grumpy 55+ year old childhood family pet desert tortoise named Iggie.
Renee took lots of dancing classes growing up: primarily ballet, but also tap and jazz. She took her Jazzercise class in the 90’s in Oregon.
Renee retired in January, 2017 on a Friday and started Jazzercise classes the following Monday right here in Sahuarita. She lost 30 pounds and lots of work-related stress. She gained new friends, a wonderful Jazzercise community, and a commitment to fitness. To solidify her commitment to fitness even more, she certified with Jazzercise as a low-impact instructor in February 2019. She was trained and mentored by our very own Lisa Barnhart.
Besides Jazzercise, her fitness favorites are Yoga/Stretch, Zumba Gold, walking and pool exercises.
Renee teaches Low-impact Jazzercise classes for GV Fit Club Wednesday and Sunday mornings. We think Renee is especially strong at cueing which makes for an easy-to-follow class. We are so happy she is a part of our terrific team of instructors.
Terri Morril
Terri grew up in near Fort Wayne, Indiana. In college, she followed a boyfriend to the University of Arizona. His grandparents, were some of the first residents of Green Valley in the 70s. After graduation, she returned to Indiana where she went to law school and first practiced with the Indiana attorney General.
Terri moved to Charleston, SC in 1980 and practiced law there for 33 years and had 4 children in her 40’s. Two of which are identical twin boys. She’s been active most of her life, taking a variety of fitness and dance classes. She even taught Aerobics in Rhythm in the 80’s. She discovered Jazzercise in 2010 which fit her busy working-mom lifestyle. Classes at 5:45 am is what it took to keep active.
Terri retired in 2013, and she and her husband David moved out west. First to New Mexico, then to the Tucson/Green Valley area. We lost her for a short while to the state of Georgia, but now she’s back in Green Valley where we think she belongs. She loves it here but hates being away from her children and grandson.
Terri likes to say that she Jazzercised her way across the country. She certified as a low-impact Jazzercise Instructor in 2017 at the spry age of 63 and has taught all over the Tucson area. Of course, her favorite place to teach is right here in Sahuarita/Green Valley.
Terri takes Jazzercise classes wherever she travels, including in Mexico City. She has many small-world Jazzercise stories. Her hobbies including reading, swimming, scuba diving, jewelry beading, cooking, and cake decorating. She loves - and misses - the ocean in SC and loves to travel.
Terri teaches low-impact Jazzercise for us at GV Fit Club Monday and Saturday mornings and we absolutely love her classes. She’s a fan of celebrity trivia and manages to squeeze in some of the most fun current music artist news during her teaching. Terri now also teaches Zumba Gold on Monday mornings
Sonja Hardy
Be warned! If you come to one of Sonja's jazzercises classes be prepared to have a blast. She loves to rock a great class by disguising the exercise and to push us a little bit harder (and laugh a bit harder too). She can play an air guitar, and air drums like no other instructor I've seen (while teaching a class) Don't worry, she brings enough air instruments for everyone.
One of her great passions.......concerts. Boy has she missed them during Covid. She has plans to marry Kenny Chesney (but don't tell her current retired firefighter husband of 25 years!) Her other loves - her 2 daughters, yes her husband, their dog Ajax and of course Jazzercise.
Sonja has been a certified Jazzercise instructor for almost 20 years and brings a fantastic library of music and routines with her from some of our favorite years past. She used to own a Jazzercise studio in Reno but stepped away from that to focus on instructing. Sonja and her husband moved from Reno just over a year ago and says she absolutely loves the area and the people.
Sonja is scheduled to teach at GV Fit Club throughout the week and is one of our high-impact instructors. Her goal is to have the class leave feeling better, stronger and happier than when they arrived.
We're thrilled to have her on our team and I personally want to thank her for being there for us all through Covid, teaching jazzercise via Zoom and fb in my garage, living room, in her kitchen, outside in the parking lot, etc.
Vanessa Barrett
Vanessa and her husband have been wintering in Green Valley since 2019. They were hoping to escape the harsh winters of rural Kansas (which they did!) but are now hooked on Green Valley and hope to make it their permanent home soon.
In the meantime, they bring their Goldendoodle with them every fall, leaving behind 4 adult children and their spouses along with 10 grandchildren. Summers are still busy in Kansas with grandkid’s ball games and babysitting.
Vanessa has been doing some type of dance fitness most of her adult life. We were happy to introduce her to Jazzercise here in Green Valley in 2019 and she quickly became hooked!
Believing that everyone, of all ability levels, can benefit from the social interaction, music and movement of group fitness she began looking for a fitness routine that would work for anyone and everyone. With Toni’s encouragement, she discovered Chair One Fitness, and has been a certified instructor since June of 2021.
The main thing that she wants you to know is, everyone starts somewhere. Her classes are open to all abilities whether you have balance issues, chronic fatigue, recovering from an injury or just starting to exercise you are welcome! This is a “no judgement” zone.
Join her on Tuesdays, Thursdays at 1pm and Saturdays at 10:30am