When my gym offered free Zumba lessons, I could not wait.
“Wow!” I told my daughter. “What a bargain!” Maybe it was my well-known klutziness or the way I danced around with the news, waving my arms to a salsa beat that put a damper on her response. Or maybe it was this summer’s media reports about Zumba sending folks to the ER.
“Be careful,” she said. “I don’t think it’s the exercise for you.”
“Well, what is?” I wanted to ask.
Finding an exercise I love has been a lifelong quest. How could four sets of 12 crunches be something anyone loves to do? But exercising to salsa music! What could be better than that? Besides, wasn’t this kind of a freestyle thing, with no actual steps?
I arrived full of enthusiasm to a class composed of one instructor and a student 40 years my junior. Maybe the TV interviews with ER doctors had taken their toll.
“Is there anything we should be concerned about here?” I asked the instructor.
“You just need to make sure you don’t blow out your ankles or knees,” she said.
I immediately imagined a large shotgun blast, as if my front tire had blown out, only it was my knee.
“How would I do such a thing?” I asked, meaning how would I avoid doing such a thing. The question sent her into a frenzy of a demonstration – first swiveling her hips and then twisting her legs and doing fancy footwork, all the while waving her arms and jumping forward and back. This went on for three or four minutes.
“Just be careful,” she said, winded only slightly because, as it turned out, she is a former professional dancer. “We’ll be taking it slow tonight, learning just one thing at a time.”
“So there are actual steps you have to learn?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said.
With that, she pointed her remote control toward the Boombox across the room and started up the music, which was as slow as a fire truck on its way to a three-alarm blaze. Maybe she was learning just one thing at a time. But I was learning a separate dance for every body part – knees, feet, elbows and arms and even stomach. I was confused by everything except how it was possible to blow out your ankles and knees. That would be easy when I tripped over my own two feet.
Meanwhile, my classmate and instructor seemed to wiggle their way along with ease and enthusiasm. Occasionally the instructor shouted “Wooooo!” or, if she was facing me, “Don’t worry. The next one is easier.”
After about 25 minutes, with knees and ankles still intact, I started toward the door with “I think that’s about it for me,” to which the instructor offered a pained grimace.
“Stick with it,” she said. “You’ll burn at least 400 or 500 calories, and you’ll de-age yourself.” The de-aging, she said, had something to do with the neurons in my brain.
Lured by the Latin rhythms, a bigger brain, and a guilt-free hot fudge sundae on the way home, I stayed and Zumba’d, but only from the waist up. I’m happy to report that my ankles and knees are just fine.
From now on, though, I’ll probably stick with crunches. I will do them only to salsa music.
Copyright 2012 Pat Snyder
