Group Exercise: The Good, the Bad and the Sweaty

 

In my 4 decades on the planet, I have seen the evolution of Group Exercise from the big hair Jazzercise craze depicted above through Step Aerobics (where no matter how hard I tried I was ALWAYS facing the wrong way on the step), Kick Boxing, Spinning, Zumba, Yoga and so on.  I have actually tried all of the classes listed except Spinning (it terrifies me) and many of them are quite fun.

 

This week I took 2 group classes at my new awesome Y.  Here is what I took away from each:

 

Zumba

 

Monday night I took a 50 minute Zumba class taught by an adorable young woman named Gigi.  She was perfect, she was delightfully curvy in a way a lot of gym instructors are not, she was encouraging without being pushy and she challenged without making the class out of reach. 

 

Speaking of the class I am happy to report that I was neither the oldest nor the fattest person there.  That is one of the benefits of Group Exercise -- Perspective.  Everyone in the class was friendly, there was a feeling of 'we are all going to pass out together so let's do this' and Gigi did a great job of forcing us to interact.  It is nice to lock eyes with another sweaty person and grin sheepishly at how silly you both look.

 

Zumba, if you missed the craze, is an aerobic class designed around Latin Music and Latin Dance moves (there are other iterations as well using African music, but I have never found one of those classes).  There is a lot of hip action in Zumba classes, hence the looking silly part, but it is actually a very good full-body workout. 

 

In the end I kept up fine, felt great and had fun.  Gigi only teaches on Mondays, so this is going to be my regular class.

 

Bars, Bands & Balls

 

This was a strength and conditioning class I took last night that uses free weights, resistance bands and stability balls (although we never used the balls last night - instead we did way too many push ups).  This class was taught by Leoni and she is the anti-Gigi.  Leoni is rail thin and while nice enough did not possess Gigi's encouraging demeanor.

 

The class was less diverse than the Zumba class. I was not the oldest, but I was definitely the least in shape and I felt a little awkward most of the time.

 

I managed about 75% of what was thrown at me, the weights and resistance band pieces were great, but the 20 minutes we spent on the mat doing push ups and planks and what not was kind of hell for someone who hasn't done any mat work in about 5 years.

 

I will likely not be back to Leoni's class for awhile.  I did take away several moves I could do on my own to build up my strength before trying a class like that again.  I am happy to report that I woke up this morning with full use of all of my limbs though.

 

Next on the schedule is a water-based group exercise class if I can squeeze it into my schedule.  What fun or crazy classes have you tried over the years?