Let's Dance!

The usual Tuesday evening routine? Drive to the gym, do an hour of Pilates, hop on the elliptical for 30 minutes, drive home. As I mentioned last night, the idea of the elliptical (in a room with broken air-conditioning, no less) was less than appealing. However, running four days in a row also didn't sound like a good plan.

Amazingly, fate intervened!

My Pilates instructor also teaches Zumba, but she teaches it on Monday and Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings. Also known as my running days. I've always wanted to try it but it just doesn't fit my schedule. But last night she mentioned at the beginning of Pilates that she was subbing for another fitness class right afterward and she was going to be teaching Zumba. Score!

So last night, instead of 30 minutes on the elliptical, I did an hour of Zumba. What's Zumba you ask? It's essentially an hour of dancing!

Check it out:



I LOVE to dance. Love, love, love it. Something not many people know about me is that I was on the dance team my senior year in high school. We practiced every day after school and performed at half-time of football and basketball games. Although some days the squad drama was too much, I lived for the actual performances.

You know, performances like this:


Note: That is not my high school dance team. It was too long ago to find any videos of us on YouTube. But this video is an excellent representation of what we did.

I tried out for the dance team in college but they did all their routines to marching band music and I never got the hang of it. Plus, it's hard to compete with girls who had been taking dance classes their whole lives. I think I took a Jazz dance class when I was a kid but other than dance camp that one year in high school I had no other formal training.

I really wish that there were dance teams like this for adults. Barring that, I wish that the Zumba class met at a time that worked for me. It was a great cross-training workout that left me nice and sweaty and made me feel good.