The DieDie Blog

This past Friday I attended our local gym’s Zumba class. I’d been looking forward to this day all week and had even managed to con one of my friends from work into joining me. So as Julie and I stepped into the very purple club with our very purple clothes on (apparently it was just a purple day) we were both giddy as school kids. After a brief stop off at the front desk to pay for our punch cards we were given a brief tour of the Women’s Fitness Company and shown the room for the Zumba class.

It was dark much like a club would be and lit by a foreign ambiance, also very club like. With the promise of burning calories to some awesome dance moves, we quickly shed our purple attire and got dressed in our Zumba outfits. Julie’s was far more appropriate than my very loose shirt and pants, but as I’m the fat one and she the skinny one, I felt no shame in my choice. I was after all there to shed the weight anyhow. We stepped back into the room and it was already going. A woman stood up front on a raised platform and the Latin beats blared out across the room.

The room itself was pretty full and finding a suitable place to gyrate took a minute of adjusting, especially when the arms began to flail about. But soon we were frantically trying to mimic the movements of the lady in front of us. It was clear right from the start that this was not the beginners class or at least most of these people were pretty quick to catch on. There was no audible lead, it was merely monkey see, monkey do. And while that’s all well and good, it took me more than a few tries to get some of the moves down. Luckily, there was a lot of repeating so if the first 2 or 3 times didn’t click the 7th one would.

Before I knew it, I was tired. My legs were bitching at me in the most sordid of ways, exclaiming that they thought they’d been retired. And the rude awakening of jumping around without stretching was a breech of contract. Never the less, I huffed and puffed on. Was I having fun? Hell yeah I was! So while I was sweating up a storm and quickly tiring my rarely used muscles out, I was still enjoying myself. That was the point after all. Get a good work out without the bore of actual exercising.

After about 30 minutes I was dying, so I ducked out of the room and to the most beautiful thing in the world: a water fountain. Slurping up the delicious wetness, I remembered that I hated the taste of water. So back in the room I went. Song after song went by with Latin dance moves, tribal dance moves, semi street moves! It was awesome! Until I saw my jiggly dancing butt in the mirror. I’ve always despised that about gyms. Sure when I’m beautiful I’ll enjoy it, but not when I’ve got belly fat flopping all over the place. Luckily, there were people in front of me and a simple half step slide cured me of that for the rest of the class.

I wish I could tell you in depth what moves or dances we did, but I can’t. I don’t know the names of them and I can vaguely recall some if you’d like me to jiggle it out for you. Honestly, if you’re really intrigued I recommend you go try it out. It is fun for those of you that would like to work out in a dance club type setting. The moves weren’t too hard, but it was the pace and the constancy that made me sweat and then later on hurt. But, it was nothing a nice hot shower couldn’t cure. So Zumba, you I like. I’ll be jiggling and wiggling again this Friday.