It also required some understanding of the beat of the music since the instructor’s routine was done according to the songs she had chosen. The dances involved moving your whole body rather than just your arms or your legs alone. Still, we would like to think that zumba was an entirely different event if you would compare it to other fitness activities like aerobics or yoga.
The activity was both stressful and exciting, mainly because going to the gym and working out was a whole new experience for Sofie and Gine, unlike Job who is already familiar with this type of atmosphere. It was pretty difficult to judge spacing between individuals performing the activity, so we were even hitting the hands of strangers. The instructor was very lively and inviting, and gave short breaks in between the session for the participants to ‘cool down’. At one point, “Baby Shark” was playing and so the choreography assigned involved a modification of its usual dance steps. The music was upbeat and were edited versions of the original, alternating between Spanish, English, and even Filipino songs. The smell was mainly a mix of the usual aroma of a gym and the sweat of people exercising. There was a female instructor, two men, and one woman dancing when we entered. The area where the activity would occur was also their weights room so there was a wall mirror on one side and various weights and plates all over the place. We joined a session in an Anytime Fitness gym (UPTC branch), taking note that only Job was a member and that Gine and Sofie made use of their “free-first-trial” promo. For their statistics, they boast that 180 countries have participated in this phenomena, which would include 150 million people in 200 thousand locations all over the world.
Zumba Fitness also states that the entire workout is a combination of all the components of fitness, namely of balance, cardio, muscle conditioning, flexibility, and energy (“Classes”, 2017). It makes use of both Latin and International music and promotes “calorie-burning”. It incorporates both high and low intensity dance steps in various intervals. Members are invited to listen to the music and routines are not set in stone such that there is the thrill of adding your own choreography to the session.Īccording to Zumba Fitness, the activity is meant to introduce to the world a new form of workout which involves a mix of dance and exercise (“Classes”, 2017). The hype with zumba, according to Beto, was that there is no specific way to do it (Luettgen et al., 2012). He used these and from there he was able to feel the music and so he began dancing Latin dances, to the enjoyment of his class. This trainer was said to have forgotten his aerobics music and was only able to find Latin tapes in his car. Zumba is a Latin-inspired exercise which was first developed “by accident” in the mid-90’s by Alberto “Beto” Perez (Luettgen et al., 2012).