- Hello and welcome to Living In The Lehigh Valley, where our focus is your health and wellness.

I'm your host, Brittany Sweeney.

If working out in a fitness center gets a bit confining and repetitive, you might want to try paddleboarding.

It's a water sport that offers a thorough physical workout while having fun in the great outdoors, and it's popular among both men and women.

To get started, you might try a quick class with seasoned paddleboarders.

We found a class geared towards women, and while we're nearing the end of the season for water sports, there's still time for some outdoor aquatics.

Our own Grover Silcox checked out LL Bean's paddleboarding program and joins us now to tell us about it.

This sounds really fun, Grover.

It's great to see you.

- Oh, great to be here.

- It seems awesome.

- It is.

We covered one of LL Bean's all-female paddleboarding classes at beautiful Lake Nockamixon in Quakertown, and it's part of LL Bean's Outdoor Discovery Programs.

They offer a lot of classes in different sports.

Paddleboarding happens to be one of them.

- Sure.

It seems like a really great way to exercise without actually feeling like you're exercising.

Isn't that the best way to do it?

- Precisely.

The instructors who lead the course actually encourage people to use their core to paddle and balance themselves on the board and then, before going out on the lake, to stretch their arms, stretch their legs.

So it's a great workout.

And of course it doesn't feel like a workout.

- Yeah, it really seems really fun, and probably that all-female class probably feels a little bit more comfortable for these women trying a new sport.

- That's what the participants told us.

And one of the nice things about paddleboarding is that it is good for people of almost every age, from 4 to 94.

According to the instructors I spoke with, you don't have to be an athlete or Olympic swimmer to enjoy it.

The folks who sign up for LL Bean's Discovery Program are generally first-timers, so the instructors pace the class accordingly, giving each participant all the time and guidance they need.

Imagine gliding across a glimmering lake on your own floating island.

That's how guides from LL Bean describe stand up paddleboarding.

- I think we've got an amazing group.

- On this day, instructors from LL Bean's Outdoor Discovery Program conduct an all-female basic paddleboarding class on beautiful Lake Nockamixon in Quakertown.

- With the all-women session, we definitely see a lot more camaraderie and kinship.

You see women working together, which is always great to see.

You might see new connections forming.

So it's really great to bring all these women together and see what happens.

Let me get you a PFD... - The coordinators outfit each participant with a PFD, or personal flotation device, before getting in the water.

- Our guides will introduce themselves, let everyone know about their background in the sport.

Then we'll go into a safety talk and then a paddle and board talk, where we talk about more specifics of that sport.

And then after that, we just get out on the water for a little bit.

Then on the back of the board here, we have the tail.

- We're going to teach you about the different parts of the sport, so what's involved, like a paddle and a paddleboard, obviously, but there's also like a leash and a fin.

So we'll go through all of the terminology.

- Decking.

That's all this yoga mat material.

- We're going to hold your hand through the process.

If it's something that's new and exciting for you, we're going to give you the tools that you need, send you out on the water and be there to guide you.

We're looking to kind of share our passions with our participants.

- All right, friends, we're going to follow Fiana down.

- Paddleboarding offers both a physical workout and a relaxing experience for beginners and experts alike.

- Stand up paddleboarding is a fantastic way to stay physically active.

You can kind of approach it to whatever your needs are.

So we have some instructors who go on what they like to call cardio paddles, and that's where they get a fantastic core workout, their heart rate goes up, they're paddling really, really fast, doing long distances.

If you just want a more relaxing experience, you can kind of just take it more easy, you can sit down on the board.

But it really is whatever you want it to be.

There's some great opportunities to improve your balance, your core strength and your leg strength, and also a little bit of your arm strength with the strokes.

- According to the instructors, many women find the all-female sessions less intimidating than the mixed program.

- Having a women's course kind of gives the comfort of being around other women getting into a new sport.

So having a safe space for women only to work on those skills and fall in love with a new sport is definitely a great aim for us.

- LL Bean assigns an instructor for every five participants, with a maximum class size of ten participants in all.

For the all-female sessions, the instructors are also female.

- With these women's only courses, we get a fair amount of participants who are in their fifties, sixties.

I've even had participants in their seventies or eighties and they've done phenomenally.

A lot of times in the mixed courses, we get couples.

So we'll get younger women and they'll bring along, like, their boyfriend or their husband.

- Once on the water, a paddleboarder's first challenge is balance.

- I think the most challenging thing is being nervous about finding that balance.

It is a little intimidating to think about standing on a floating board in the middle of the lake.

But a lot of people just give it a try.

And once you find that center of balance, you're great.

- But in reality, you can sit on the board, you can lay down on the board.

You don't have to stand the whole time.

And that's fine.

And we don't want you to not fall in the water.

We really want people to just treat the board like their own personal floating island.

And you can have fun on a paddleboard even after you fall in, or if you can't stand up on the board.

- We encourage people to jump or to fall and then to get back on the board, especially when we're there with you to help you out.

- The instructors tell us that the women who sign up for these sessions enjoy the experience, and some even become avid paddleboarders.

- Our Discovery classes are an hour and a half long.

We typically do about 15, 20 minutes of instruction or lecture time, and then the rest, we try and get you as much water time as possible because that's what you're there for.

- For Lindsey Johnson and her team of instructors, teaching paddleboarding gives them an opportunity to share a sport they love.

- I love paddling.

I'm excited to be out on the water and I love that we get to run these courses for our local community.

- Woo!

- In covering this group, one participant told me she signs up for the class regularly because LL Bean provides the paddleboard, paddle, PFD, or personal flotation device, and assistance.

So for her, it's a matter of convenience rather than learning the basics.

Plus, of course, she really loves the exercise and getting out on the lake.

- Grover, in addition to the exercise you get from paddleboarding, it seems like it would just be really rejuvenating to just get out on the water and the park.

Really refreshing.

- It really is.

That's a big part of it, because Nockamixon State Park is just beautiful, 5,400-plus acres of woodland, and the lake covers 1,400 acres.

It's just beautiful and you just feel so rejuvenated.

- Absolutely.

So when do LL Bean's programs pause for the winter?

- Well, the paddleboarding sort of wraps up in the next week or so, but their kayaking class and archery and some other programs go on through October and, of course, everything then picks back up in the spring in May.

- Sure.

We didn't see you on the paddleboard this time, but I heard that you're pretty good at it.

- Yeah!

Some of our camera crew have witnessed my expert paddleboarding.

- I love it.

I'd love to see that next time.

All right, Grover, as always, great to see you.

All right.

That'll do it for this edition of Living In The Lehigh Valley.

I'm Brittany Sweeney, hoping you stay happy and healthy.