Many people have been asking me exactly what Zumba is like since I mentioned that I’d started using Zumba Fitness. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s somewhat difficult to describe, as it offers dance moves I’ve never seen before. But that’s somewhat of a cop out. At the end of a Sunday run recently, some friends asked me to show them one of the moves. The dance step I most often use for illustrative purposes I generally call “the Opah!” Anyone who’s been to a Greek, Jewish or Middle Eastern wedding knows this step. In fact, anyone who’s ever seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding knows it as well. Stand up straight. Put your arms in the air with your upper arms at a right angle to your body and with your forearms sticking straight up. Rotate your hands in to face your head and hold your fingers up. Now grapevine sideways slowly. That, my friends, is what I call “the Opah!”
I’m not sure what it’s actually called, and whether it has an official name in one or more languages. For purposes of Zumba and Zumba Fitness, it’s one of the dance moves used in every program. In Zumba, it’s generally done pretty quickly with a hip rotation pulling the entire body around in a circle at each end of the grapevine. But that is not all, my friends; oh no, that is not all.
I decided to describe how to get to my favorite workouts for you, as well as to give some idea of what awaits when you get there.
The Zumba Fitness disc opens like most with a Welcome splash page. Next you go to the Play page. You decide whether you want to join a party or do a class. I like the class. They then confirm your profile name. Then you choose which class you’d like to take. Options include 20 and 45 minute beginning, intermediate or advanced class. I always choose the 45 minute intermediate. At this point, the advanced Zumba classes intimidate me. Once you decide on what class you’d like to take, you then get to choose your program. The 45 minute intermediate class has many options. I generally use the first three. Once you’ve decided on the actual class, they ask what type of action, and I choose night club.
I thought about going through every dance unit with you, describing all of the dances in order, but realized that it might be overly comprehensive for a blog post. For our purposes, I’ll simply outline the slide warm up. It’s the first workout unit, is about four minutes long and includes rapid repeats of dance moves such as salsa, hip swivels, squats, charlie horses, grapevines and reaches during all of them. By the end of this set, your body should be warmed up, you’ll most probably be sweating (profusely), and you’ll only feel acclimated if you’ve done the set before a number of times.
As I’ve said before, there’s something about Zumba that confuses the body and mind. It is quite difficult to describe without showing the other person, and doing Zumba without music is a bit odd and ungainly outside of Brazil. That being said, it’s a heck of a lot of fun and worth the money and effort of doing it.
It’s bizarre and funny and a great workout and I highly recommend that you check out Zumba and Zumba Fitness.
Are you doing Zumba or Zumba Fitness? How do you find them?
