Zumba!

Zumba was amazingly fun last night and challenging at the same time. If you don’t know what Zumba is then you are missing out. A fitness class choreographed around Latin inspired music and dance moves, Zumba is high intensity and easy to do (once you get the steps down). Some of the moves can be very exotic at times, and for the mostly house wives and moms in the class last night I can say that everyone was bust’n out their best moves. I myself was very thankful for the dance lessons I took with my husband before our wedding, where we learned many of the same dance steps that are utilized into Zumba. Overall, a great workout, with a great instructor, and an unintimidating group of people made for a great experience I will go back for again.

The class itself was an hour long and filled with about 50 people – an overwhelming portion of women of course with a couple of scattered men into the mix. The instructor was high energy and kept the pace at a steady; moderate level of difficulty, which I really liked. I’ve had aerobic-like classes before where it starts out super easy and you get over confident, and then all of a sudden the music changes and it’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done! Nope, not this time. Of course there were times where I had to stop and watch her steps, but never did I feel that I was lacking in ability. There were a lot of side stepping, bouncing, arm movements up and down, and squatting. I was very impressed with how much of a full body workout this class is going to be. A full hour of high intensity cardio is just so thrilling to experience, especially when most of my days consisted of cleaning house, cooking food, whipping poppy butts, or sitting around playing with toys with my daughter! Don’t get me wrong, I love almost all of the activities (sans the poppy butt), but a full hour of time where I had to focus on nothing else but moving my body in the right ways really helped to clear my mind and focus my energy again.

So, what are the results from this class? Well, I looked up at Sparkpeople how many calories I may have burned and they had posted that there is no way to adequately calculate how many actual calories are being burned and there is no scientific study done to tell how many are being burned in Zumba. So, I hit the search engine on Google and ended up at ehow.com where they have posted this.
"Zumba workouts can vary in intensity, and calorie burn depends on an individual's weight, fitness level and muscle composition. During an hour long session you can burn anywhere from 500 to 800 calories. On average, a 150-lb. person can expect to burn 536 calories during an hour of Zumba. "
So, since I am not an average sized person I really have no clue how many calories I burned last night in Zumba class, but I can tell you this – I sweat like crazy when I workout hard and I went home with a wet head of hair and wet t-shirt. Zumba is an exhilarating, fast paced, total body workout and exactly what I was looking for!