She’s aware that people think her exercise routine “Prancercise”
is “goofy,” and that by extension its founder must be “spooky and goofy
and weird and wacky. I say bring it on. I love it. Look at all the
attention it’s getting me. If I wasn’t all those things, I wouldn’t be
who I am.”
She also wouldn’t be an Internet
sensation, which is something of an understatement. Since Rohrback
recently revived the hilariously original aerobic routine she created in
1989 but shelved for more than two decades, the Coral Springs, Florida,
woman has been bombarded with so many clicks at her website
that it crashed Wednesday, and she’s scrambling to figure out how to
add more server capacity. She can barely keep track of the interview
requests galloping in. It’s such a big deal that its founder can’t find
the time to prancercise.
“I
didn’t even get to do it today, and I’m so upset about it,” Rohrback
told The Daily Beast. “I can’t even do all the interviews. I’m going
wacko.”
Wait,
what’s prancercise? Have you been living in Pyongyang or something?
It’s an exercise routine inspired by horses, featuring such moves as
“the prancercise gallop” and “the prancercise box” as well as some
incredible rhymes by its instructor and founder, Rohrback, decked out in
a crisp salmon jacket and some very revealing white pants:
“We’re gonna really cut the noose and let it loose, with the prancercise gallop.”
And:
“It’s better to be punching into space than in your face.”
Back
when the 61-year-old social worker invented the exercise routine, there
was no Internet—at least not as we know it. There was just a woman in
Hollywood walking down the street one day and inventing a whole new way
to work out.
“I
must have heard a really good song I liked on the radio,” Rohrback
said. “I started moving in a rhythmic way, using ankle weights. And it
just evolved.”
It
felt like prancing, she said, like the way a happy horse frolics
through a field of poppies. She was using her upper body and her legs,
and because the whole thing was so fluid and natural, there was no
pounding impact on the pavement. Prancercise was born, and it was
beautiful.
Rohrback
started prancercising outside, every day, on the “boardwalk” in
Hollywood. People asked her about it constantly. “I think I even got it
on a news clip,” she said. She quickly realized she shouldn’t keep
prancercising to herself.
She
made a video, but there was no YouTube to host it. So to be sure no one
could ever steal the idea, she created a permanent record of her
creation: “Funky Punky’s Prancercise Program.”
She filed it in the Library of Congress.
“Things
were different back then,” she told The Daily Beast. “Prancercising was
developed before Zumba came out. If I had had the investors and
everything back then, prancercising would have been a huge hit.”
Then
came “obstacles,” Rohrback said, including a “female condition” that
sidelined her. She couldn’t prancercise for nine years. It was horrible.
“This book finally let me experience my inner horse. I was like a child again.”
Doctors
said Rohrback needed surgery, but she knew the power to heal herself
could only come from within. She cured herself, she said, with a strict
regimen of natural herbs and diet.
In
the meantime, she held down jobs as a social worker for the state of
Florida and as a realtor. She founded the Vegetarian Advocate’s Group.
She created a support group for people with food addictions, and another
group of “Citizens for Democracy.” And she wrote a book: Prancercise: The Art of Physical and Spiritual Excellence, which was back then an unpublished manuscript.
Last
July, for the first time in nearly a decade, Joanna Rohrback discovered
that she could prance once more. She knew it was time to share her
creation with the world.
“I wake up and here it is, 2012. Oh my god, I had never fulfilled my dream,” she said. “The top of my bucket list
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