The pen is mightier than the sword, but that’s only because the pen spends three nights per week bench-pressing paper clips. Stay in tiptop sharp-object-dodging shape with today’s Groupon to ACAC Fitness & Wellness Center in Midlothian. Choose between the following options:

• For $39, you get a six-week individual membership (a $94.50 value).
• For $79, you get a six-week family membership (a $171 value).<p>

ACAC’s behemoth facilities house both studios full of exercise equipment and pools full of in-water training space, imparting health upon adults and kids alike. More than 80 cardio machines, including ellipticals, bikes, and treadmills, torch calories, and the Healthquest indoor circuit orbits solo exercisers around resistance-training machinery stationed in an area that—like the Oval Office and a space shuttle’s billiards room—is carpeted. A full schedule of group classes teaches physique-chiseling strategies with such fitness mainstays as cycling, step, aquatic exercise, yoga, and Pilates, for which ACAC won an award from Richmond magazine for Best Pilates Studio in 2010.

ACAC goes to great lengths to accommodate kiddos with sport courts, pools, and youth-centric programming. Indoor basketball and tennis courts invite progeny of all ages for pickup games or host them for technique-finessing lessons. Similarly, swim coaches hit the indoor pool to teach spawns such basic strokes as freestyle, butterfly, and the water-avoiding cat. While parents work out, youngsters can congregate in Spider Mountain, a towering, netted jungle gym for toddlers, or in the mezzanine hangout that houses air hockey, Wii, and Dance Dance Revolution for older kids.