A New Beat in Parkpoint's Rhythm

After a wide search, in Healdsburg has hired a popular Santa Rosa fitness and Zumba instructor as its new full-time group exercise and fitness director.

Jan Blalock, who teaches Zumba two nights per week at the Santa Rosa Parkpoint Health Club, and Zumba, toning and strength classes at the private Montecito Heights Health Club in Santa Rosa on weekday mornings, started in the Healdsburg job April 3.

She is continuing to teach 12 classes per week, while also working full time to strengthen the group fitness program at Parkpoint Healdsburg. Zumba is a choreographed dance fitness class that focuses on Latin rhythms and songs.

"If you're in the fitness world, you always tend to work one and a half jobs," says Blalock, who is also teaching Zumba at Parkpoint Healdsburg on Monday nights. "If you love fitness and training, you want to do both the administrative work as well as the instruction and training work."

Blalock, 56, at one time a professional dancer in several companies in San Francisco, most recently was the full time Program Manager at the Club One at Autodesk in San Rafael. Her new post in Healdsburg will cut five hours a week from her commute and thus free up some welcome breathing room in a tightly packed schedule, she said.

"I can already tell that Jan is a fabulous addition to the staff," said Parkpoint Healdsburg Assistant Manager Niamh Winslow. "Jan has a great overview of the fitness industry and she gets along well with everyone.

"She's really personable and approachable," Winslow added. "It is really great for our club members to have her on board."

Parkpoint posted the full-time position after the club's Pilates trainer, Dahdri McCormick, who had been wearing another hat as group fitness manager, needed to make room for organizing a rapidly growing Pilates program, Winslow said.

Blalock, who has extensive business experience as a general manager -- and later a store owner -- for Bare Woods Furniture Stores for 10 years, was already well-known to the Healdsburg Club because of the popularity of her Zumba classes in Santa Rosa.

"I've always been teaching classes, even when I worked at the furniture stores," she said. "I've been teaching for the last 35 years." Blalock, who is married to musician, hospital staff member and third degree Taekwondo black belt Jeremy Gorman, has two daughters, 17 and 23, from a previous marriage. She has a degree in dance from

Originally from Southern California, Blalock danced professionally in San Francisco after college graducation and then returned to Los Angeles where she danced and worked and was married for the first time.

In 1992, she returned to Santa Rosa as a single mom because, she said, it was a better place to raise her two daughters. Her younger daughter, Lauren Allaire, will graduate in two weeks from Santa Rosa High School, where she is a member of the school's Artquest Dance Co. 

Lauren, following in Blalock's dance footsteps, will attend the dance program at University of California, Irvine, in the fall. Her older daughter, Stephanie Allaire, is a fashion stylist for Neiman Marcus in Walnut Creek.

Gorman and Blalock, who married seven years ago, first met in the 1970s at Sonoma State when Blalock danced in the SSU  troupe and Gorman worked the stage lighting. They were just acquaintances at that time.

Then, almost two decades later, on the first day that Blalock went to work at a Bare Woods store in Santa Rosa, she was introduced to the new operations manager, who also was starting his job that day. It was Gorman.

"I said, 'You look familiar,'" Blalock said. The couple eventually purchased a Bare Woods store in Napa and ran it for several years until the recent economic downturn led them to close the shop.

Meanwhile, at Parkpoint Healdsburg, Blalock said she is busy learning what classes are doing well and what changes members would like to see.

"I looked at the surveys we did from the members," she said. "People said they wanted more cardio classes at night -- so I've added my Zumba class.

"People also said they wanted tai chi, so we've added a six week specialty series at noon on Fridays and at 4 p.m. Mondays," she said.