Military to Civilian Fitness

The other day, my roommate asked me if I wanted to go to Zumba with her. I told her that I’d heard of it, but I had no idea what it was. She said “it’s hard to explain it. It’s just a really fun dance workout class. Try it out and see if you like it”. So that’s what I did. I went to class with her that day, and the next day, and the next day…. It’s easy to see that I LOVED it! I had no idea how much fun this work out class would be.

Just to give a little background as to what it is, this is a dance class with Latin-based moves. These include shaking your butt (till you can’t anymore!), body rolls, waving your arms in the air, and kicks.

If you can find a good class, they usually dance to songs from the radio. My first time going, we dance to Carwash, Britney Spear’s Hold it Against Me, Bruno Mars’ The Way You Are, and a bunch of other awesome songs. It was so much fun!

Well, after my first time going I felt exhausted. I figured I did a lot of good exercise and decided to find out what I’d just done for myself. After a few minutes of research, I found that Zumba is great for working out your abs and glutes, which was sort of a given. But the really awesome news was that one hour of Zumba burns 800 calories! That news was music to my ears, considering my main goal right now is to get back into shape. I think I’ve found my work out program.

I’ve also been supplementing this exercise with a few other vigorous activities, like running a few times a week and weight lifting.  This combination of things seems to really be working for me. I love that I can have fun burning calories, it’s just great! I’d recommend Zumba for everyone, guys and girls alike.