Dancing to Boost Your Health and Your Mood
Dance workouts can make you happier, smarter, and a lot healthier. Here are 5 tips to get you started.
We all know that that exercise is good for our health but it can be hard to get motivated. That’s why we recommend engaging in an exercise that is fun and doesn’t feel like work, like dancing.
What’s great about dance fitness is that it’s an aerobic exercise that almost everyone can enjoy and easily do at home. Whether you’re 2 or 100, you also don’t have to be a professional dancer to reap the benefits of this type of workout. Dancing is like many other cardio activities. It gets your blood pumping, which has benefits for your heart and other biomarkers, as well as your muscles.
Another reason why dance is such a great form of physical fitness is because it incorporates movements on all planes of motion for your body, which means you’re working several different muscles, which is great for balance and stability. It is a way to workout your entire body, unlike repetitive forms of exercising like jogging or riding a bike. All styles of dance can be great cardio workouts. Plus, there are also many different forms of dance, which makes this form of physical fitness accessible to many different body types, ages, and abilities.
Dance is also inclusive. It’s a way of connecting with others even if you aren’t familiar with the culture and can’t speak the same language. You don’t have to speak the same language to learn how the tango or a Bollywood dance.
Dance is also great for your brain. Learning new dance moves can help you improve motor control and hand-eye coordination, and a recent study suggests that dance training can even slow the brains aging process. Scientists have even found that dance was the only form of physical activity that was associated with a lower the risk of getting dementia out of 11 physical activities, including cycling, golfing, swimming, and tennis! If that’s not enough, dance fitness can also boost your mood and brighten your outlook on life.
So, ready to get started? Here are 5 tips from our head fitness coach, Brittney Rae:
- Start! It’s important to get the ball rolling, whether you’re calling your doctor to set up a check-up appointment to make sure that you’re considering any limitations from a medical condition to looking around for classes that you’re interested in. Any step toward improving your health can be considered a success.
- Do warm-up stretches or warm-up activities before your dance fitness session to prevent injury.
- Drink plenty of water before, during, and after the dance fitness session.
- Keep in mind that it’s okay to take breaks and watch new dance moves to make sure you don’t injure yourself. Sometimes it’s easy to get carried away or feel pressure to keep up with the instructor in the class but you’re health and well-being always come first. No class is worth a serious injury.
- Challenge yourself but set realistic goals. Like we said in Tip 1, any step towards that goal is a success.
Lastly, have fun! Just let loose and enjoy yourself. Dance while you’re getting ready or while you’re making dinner. You can always fit in a little time to dance.
If you’re looking for a place to start, you can always join one of FIT & NU’s classes like our virtual Cardio Hip Hop class with Fitness Coaches Brittney Rae and Luz on Thursday evenings at 5:30pm (Mountain Time). You can also follow us on Instagram to preview some of our other classes as well. Our class schedules are also posted on our website.
Whether you join one of our classes or different ones, we’d love to hear from you! Share some of your favorite dance moves in a comment or tag us in one of your photos!
