Zumba

The good news this morning is that I can still walk, the bad news is that I can confirm with perfect confidence that I was born with two left feet. I had my first Zumba class last night and all I can say is God Give Me Strength to get through the next 10 weeks! Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of fun and I certainly did sweat, but I don’t think I did one correct step in the whole hour! After the first dance which was supposed to be “slow” as a warm up all I could say was “I have so much respect for those people on Dancing with the Stars”!

I do not have the moves, baby!

I won’t say I am exactly discouraged but as a high achiever I loath being at the bottom of the class. This reminds me of the time I took the tatting class where I was also the dummy in the class. At least that time I had a bit of an excuse because all the other ladies were over 70 and had done tatting before. I was 35 and had never done a stitch. But dancing, this I have done. Why is it that as soon as it becomes an exercise everything seems speeded up 10 times. I was at least 12 steps behind the teacher and by the third dance I was simply pretending to keep up. The good news, according to Charlotte, is that while I was definitely the worst in the class there were a lot of other people in the class who were also not keeping up and going to their own tempo. Her tip to me was to not do the turns and just keep watching the teacher the whole time. I don’t hold out much hope for me though. I dreamt about tap tap tapping until I am sure my feet were moving in the night. Thumper decided to get out of Dodge and slept on the floor.

I think my heart rate is still up this morning, is that a good thing? Just kidding.

So are you wondering what the heck Zumba is? It is every kind of dance step thrown in one step (at least when I do it). We did Salsa, belly dancing, Walk like an Egyptian, Reggae (which I thought was the Macarena at first and I thought “oh good, I know this one”, silly me) and a lot of two stepping that was suddenly four stepping. I’ve heard it was a very addictive exercise and maybe it will be if I don’t break a leg first! Quite honestly I don’t think I can master the steps in 10 easy lessons. What did I think I was getting in to? I thought it was exercise with some kind of dance step, I didn’t think I would be doing actual dance steps the whole night long at lightening speed! But like I said, I can still walk this morning and only hurt in my ego so I suppose that is a good thing.

As we left our class we walked by the swimming pool and I thought “oh, let’s see if there is Free Style at 7:00” but unfortunately it was Water Polo and Charlotte didn’t want her sweaty hair in a helmet. Go figure.