Get moving
/Neu-Fit/West Iowa Martial Arts helps people be active
Anne Neumann started learning Taekwondo when she was 40, and now holds a third-degree black belt and is a Taekwondo and fitness instructor. Photo by Dan Mundt
“My goal is to try to get people moving,” said Anne Neumann. “If you don’t move, you age quickly. Very quickly.”
Anne is the owner of Neu-Fit/West Iowa Martial Arts in Denison, which is where she teaches a variety of fitness activities that help people get moving.
She initially began learning Taekwondo about 20 years ago.
“I have four boys, and my second son was in dance class,” Anne said. “After a while, you can tell when it’s not going well when they kind of shuffle and stand there, so I said to him, ‘We should probably try something different.’”
She took her son to Taekwondo classes with instructor Steve Englehart, who taught classes in the building Anne now owns at 1316 First Avenue North, which was formerly owned by the Masons and long before that was the town’s original opera house.
“I watched for about a month and then I thought, ‘Well, I can do this,’” Anne said.
She started to take classes and soon was teaching Taekwondo.
When Engelhart left Denison, Anne took over the space on the main floor of the building for her own Taekwondo and fitness classes.
Two years ago, she purchased the whole building and opened the upstairs space; she uses the lower level for personal training and the upstairs area for Taekwondo.
“We’re affiliated with Iowa State University and Grandmaster Yong Chin Pak,” Anne said. “My testing is done there. When I test for a higher belt rank, that’s where I’ll be going.”
Anne currently holds a third-degree black belt; she will likely test for a higher rank in December, she said.
She didn’t start out with plans for owning her own fitness business.
Anne grew up in Denison and is a 1983 Denison High School graduate.
After attending Golden West College in California for a few years, she returned to Iowa and went to Western Iowa Tech for a dental assistant certification.
“I’m not opposed to dental assisting – it just didn’t work out for me,” Anne said. “When I lived in Sioux City, I couldn’t find a full-time job as a dental assistant, so I ended up working for MCI Telecommunications.”
She and her husband, Dale, lived in Kiron for a while before moving to Denison 25 years ago.
Life’s unpredictability is one reason she encourages everyone to be active.
Dale died in 2021 at age 67.
“Life is too short,” Anne said. “You just need to do it; you need to be active.”
Her youngest son is 16 and still in high school.
Anne said she works to keep her fitness classes affordable so anyone can take them.
To make ends meet, she works part time at ID Apparel in Denison.
Her Taekwondo classes are organized by age: kids from age four to six are in the dragon class; kids from six or seven to 11 are in the tiger class.
“And I offer a senior or family class,” Anne said. “If there is an older sibling that has a younger sibling, they would come to the senior class and they’d just bring the younger sibling. I say ‘family’ because sometimes parents can’t make two different trips for their child, so I just put them together.”
She also offers a kettlebell exercise group, kickboxing and kettlebell kickboxing classes, and weightlifting.
This is the Taekwondo training area at Neu-Fit/West Iowa Martial Arts in Denison. The building was Denison’s original opera house. Photo by Dan Mundt
Anne recently started a program called “Renew Your Strength.”
“That’s at the Methodist Church; I have it there because some of them cannot do the steps (at her building),” she said.
Anne rents a space from the church to provide fitness activities for seniors.
“We use stretching bands, light weights and then we also use weighted balls,” she said. “We do that two days a week and we have a light lunch after that.”
“Renew Your Strength” is a mission project for the church, but anyone is welcome to join, she said.
Neu-Fit is also affiliated with the Hold Fast Ruck Club.
A ruck is a weighted backpack that increases physical exertion while walking.
“We walk instead of running because a lot of people’s joints are shot,” she said. “It gives you a little extra cardio with the walking.”
Sometimes fun wrinkles are added to rucks.
“We did a ‘cooler ruck’ where we dragged a cooler full of beer around Yellow Smoke and then we grilled,” Anne said.
She has also taught self-defense classes for students in local schools and for businesses.
Anne encourages anyone of any age to find a way to get active.
“You can’t just sit,” she said. “No matter what you choose to do, whether it’s just a light walk or stretching bands, light weights, heavy weights, rowing; whatever you love to do, you need to do it.”
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