On Wednesday I had said that I was going to a Zumba class on Thursday night. That didn’t happen because I opted for staying home and making a healthy & delicious dinner instead. Priorities, right? LOL. (BTW, I made grilled chicken, grilled zucchini, and brown rice – yum!).
Since a few of you were looking forward to my thoughts on the class, and I definitely didn’t want to be a complete flake, I found out that there’s also a Saturday morning class offered at 10am at another nearby 24 Hour Fitness. So I headed there this morning. I spent about half an hour on Friday afternoon looking up various YouTube videos about Zumba so that I would feel prepared. From everything I saw, I thought I’d have no problem with the steps in the class.
Now I’m a woman with big hips and I know how to use them. I have great rhythm, and I think I’m a good dancer. Since I can swing and sway my hips with the best of them, I figured the merenge, salsa, and cha cha cha would be no problem for me. HA! With that said, I felt like I had two left feet the entire time I was in the class today. The class was extremely fast-paced and had lots of fancy footwork that I had never done before. Not only that but the instructor was maybe 5 feet tall, and I arrived just as the class was about to start, so I was stuck with a space in the back, making it almost impossible for me to see her. There were at least 50 people in the class, so it was jam-packed. Unfortunately, the women in front of me were rhythmically challenged (to put it nicely), so watching them didn’t really help matters too much.
Even though there were many, many times that I felt like I was doing a completely different class from everyone else, I had a blast. I loved the music and the energy in the room. The instructor was hilarious and said things like, “Honey, I’m 62, so if I can do this, you can do this, now MOVE!“ At another point she was having us shimmy and she said, “now if you like a guy, you can even shake your “treats,” (meaning our boobs), “but if you don’t like him too well, you save those for yourself.” It was hysterical, and I found myself laughing out loud at least 3 or 4 times throughout the class. I don’t remember ever doing that in a more traditional aerobics class!
The class was really high-intensity, fast-paced, and challenging, as I said. I was sweating dripping throughout the class, and that’s really saying something for me, because I normally don’t sweat that much at all, even during an intense workout with Jimmy. My heart rate was highly elevated the entire time, but not in an uncomfortable, I’m-going-to-die kind of way; more like an I’m-really-moving-my-body-to-the-beat kind of way. Sort of like when you’re out dancing with your friends and you really get into a song and just can’t stop.
Another thing I really enjoyed about the class was the music. It was mostly Latin beats with a bit of hip hop mixed in. The mix that the teacher was using was broken up into 10 minute segments, so you never felt like you were doing any one style of dance too long. It really made the hour fly by.
As far as calorie burn, in the one hour class I burned over 800 calories and earned 14 Activity Points!!! (When I entered it in eTools I used the “high-intensity aerobics class” as the entry, because that’s exactly what it was). Now, your results will vary because both of those previous stats are based on my weight, and since I weigh a lot, I burn a lot. I’ve already well surpassed my calorie-burn target for today, and it’s only 7:20pm, which is awesome.
The one complaint I have about the class was that it was in no way geared for beginners. It was more of a sink or swim thing. Since I’d never done much of the footwork before, some of it was very difficult to follow. Still, I kept my body moving the entire time, and tried my best to approximate the moves that I saw everyone else doing. I’m sure it wasn’t a joy for anyone catching my rear-end view, but whatever. I stayed after class and asked the teacher if she taught a beginner’s class, and she said she didn’t. In fact, she told me that today’s class wasn’t as intense as the one on Thursday nights; she said that class was more of an advanced class. So maybe it was a good thing that I flaked out on going on Thursday night, because I know I probably couldn’t have handled that class, at least not yet.
I definitely want to keep taking Zumba, but I think I need to start a bit slower. I looked it up, and 24 Hour Fitness offers a Zumba Gold class, which is more geared towards beginners and seniors. It’s only offered on Fridays at 10am, so I normally won’t be able to attend, but luckily this Friday is still summer vacation, so I can go. I better soak up as many of those moves as I can! The other thing is that this instructor doesn’t normally teach the Saturday morning class, so maybe the regular instructor is a bit less intense.
Either way, I had the best time today, and I’m definitely going to keep going. Hopefully next time I can get to class early so that I can position myself more in the middle so I’ll be able to see and follow the instructor.
If there are Zumba classes offered through your gym or a nearby dance studio, I’d definitely recommend giving it a try!
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