Zumba

I have a new goal. And that is to become a Zumba instructor.

After reading the lovely Amy's post in which she mentioned that she tried Zumba for the first time, I decided I wanted to write a post about it.

What is Zumba? According to Zumba Fitness:

"Zumba Fitness® is the only Latin-inspired dance-fitness program that blends red-hot international music, created by Grammy Award-winning producers, and contagious steps to form a 'fitness-party' that is downright addictive.
Since its inception in 2001, the Zumba program has grown to become the world's largest – and most successful – dance-fitness program with more than 12 million people of all shapes, sizes and ages taking weekly Zumba classes in over 110,000 locations across more than 125 countries."

Fun side fact: it was kind of created on accident. Beto Perez was an aerobics teacher and one day realized he forgot the normal aerobics tape he had his students dance to...so he went out to his car and got his own personal grooves that were Latin salsa and merengue music for his students to dance to. They loved it so much they asked to dance to it again...and so Zumba was born.

It is so fun! I decided to take a Zumba class this year on a whim and I was a little scared because A: I hate unintentionally making a fool of myself and B: I just don't dance. But I did it because I wanted some sort of exercise class to get myself a bit more in shape for the upcoming marriage I am about to participate in.

The first day I HATED it!!! I was so uncoordinated and felt like an idiot. The next class period I heard some other girls talking about how stupid they felt...and then I realized that probably most of the girls in there felt like stupid, uncoordinated buffoons, too. So I just stopped worrying and now I love it. And I'm way better at it too, so that's a plus.

I have an awesome instructor named Andrea. She is super cool, nice, and funny, and she has the best dance moves. I especially like her because Zumba typically uses a lot of Latin-style music, but she loves to throw some hip-hop/gangster tunes in the mix as well. Those are my favorite to dance to. Here's a sample. It's called "Muevela" by Angel y Khriz. It's probably been my favorite we've danced to so far.

So yep, my goal is to lose some weight, get better at Zumba, and eventually become an instructor. I'd love to do it a few hours a week when Dan and I have a family--a good way to get out of the house a bit but not so time-consuming that I can't raise our kids how I should. Normally I'd think that was totally far-fetched except that Andrea is very much like me--before Zumba she hated running/exercise in general (though I suppose I don't hate it, I'm just not great at it) then she got into Zumba. She lost 30 pounds doing it (still waiting for that one to happen) and got super Zumbafied after 6 months or so. She's been doing Zumba for 2-3 years and is SO good that she was approached by BYU (she's a student at UVU) and asked to come teach it.

Anyways, everybody should try Zumba, it is way fun. And it's like a secret work out. You totally get your heartbeat up and get a good sweat going, but unlike running when you're like, "Oh my gosshh I seriously have 38297 more miles to run!?" you're like, "YES! I love this song, let's go." So it's super fun exercise.

And that is my plug for Zumba. Thank you.