Zumba!

My upper arms are aching from a senior (50-plus) aerobics class that I crashed this morning. How embarrassing. How presumptuous of me to think it would be easy. I sweat, I ached, I groaned, and I even had trouble balancing myself on one of those giant red balls. Good thing I had the hindsight to bring extra water, because in between belly dancing and the samba, I needed a break. That’s right! This wasn’t a “dancing to the oldies” class at all, but a hip swinging, cha-cha stepping Zumba class with unique moves to the beat of Latin music!

The instructor, Beth, is not only a Zumba expert, but has the tanned and toned body of Brittany Spears. As a snowbird just returning from Florida (I am guessing she’s about 65), I was excited to see her and reconnect. I missed her Zumba class earlier in the week, so we mutually agreed that I could test out her 50-plus Zumba version which was about to start. “No problem” I said. This would be “trozo de tarta”.

So there I was along with six other seniors, feeling for the first time to be the “fittest” one in the group. ¡Qué un cántaro! It was evident that after the warm-up, that I was going to work extra hard to keep up with the others. Plus, I had to relearn the steps like the cumbia, merengue, mambo, rumba, flamenco and caylpso. The music she selected was very motivating, but in order to keep up with the others, I just deleted the upper arms.

Sometimes, you could hear the walls vibrating from a spinning class next door where people closer to my age seem to gravitate faithfully. I’ve been much too intimidated to take this class. Maybe its because everyone looks so serious as they put their towels over their bike as if to claim their territory. Someday I’ll venture in there, but only to see what happens when they turn off the lights.

For now, think I’ll stick with Zumba. Derived from a Columbian word meaning to move fast and have fun, I can only hope that when I turn 50, I’ll still have what it takes to Zumba like the pros at class this morning.

Postscript: For more info on Zumba, go to https://www.zumba.com/index.cfm