Zumba Crazy

While on my lifelong quest to become fit and healthy, a friend of mine said she'd seen advertisements of a Zumba class held at my school (which is often used for community purposes outside of hours). I had never been to an actual class before, only made a fool of myself on the Wii console with it, but for her, I was willing to go along and try it out. The first class was free, so what did I have to lose?

For those of you that aren't aware, Zumba is a fitness program consisting of dance and aerobic exercise routines to mainly Latin-American music, but we also dance to chart music sometimes too. It's centered around burning calories and exercising without feeling like you're working out.

So, a few of my friends and I turned up for the class and put our bags and water to the side and the Instructor walked in wearing a bright neon Zumba Fitness top with "Instructor" written on the back. We were told to just copy her and a lady pushed us to the front so we didn't get lost.
I'll admit, I felt completely out of my depth at this point. I'm not very coordinated or confident with stuff like dancing, especially in front of other people. And because this was held at my school, even if it was after hours, I felt strange.

The music came on and I copied the instructor and I couldn't help but laugh at myself! I really enjoyed it and once I got going I didn't care about how stupid I must've looked because everyone else was doing it and it was fun! The warm up song ended (a song I was pleased that I knew), and I turned to my friend and she had this huge grin on her face. "I love it already!" I said. And I did.

Some of the moves are a bit "raunchy" - for lack of a better word, but it was great! How many times a week would it be socially acceptable for me to shake my hips to music whilst not caring how stupid I look? Not many, not very many at all. It gives me the opportunity to exercise and it enjoy and afterwards I feel great and energized!

I would strongly suggest anyone who already hasn't, to get to their nearest leisure center and attend a Zumba Fitness Session!