Book It Out: Ways to Dance Yourself to Fitness
Do you like to start the day by doing something active and fun? If that tickles your fancy, here are some dance genres you can take inspiration from and incorporate into your fitness routine. So get into some comfortable clothing and get your groove on!
1. Street Dance
For a full-body experience, street dances will strengthen your core while you jam to trendy beats. Since the music’s got your back, you don’t need prior experience to attempt this—a lot of it is freestyle and it’s as simple as following the up-down bounce rhythm or bopping your head to the music. Sounds easy? It is! And you’ll still break into a sweat after an intense session, especially if you get carried away by the music.
To get started, search for any street dance genre workout on YouTube. Some examples include house and hip-hop. You can choose from the wide selection of follow-along tutorials for your exercise of the day, so enjoy learning some funky-cool moves as part of your next workout!
Alternatively, check out a book or two on the topic and see how far you can get by following the illustrations and descriptions. Since there’s no right or wrong, you can make the dance your own.
Here’s a video of me checking out Street Dance: The Best Moves by D.J. Hooch as I try to follow the steps laid out in the instructional guide:
2. Zumba
Did you know that Zumba came about when an aerobics instructor forgot to bring his usual music to class? He had only Latin music cassette tapes and made his students dance to it instead. They loved it so much that they wanted more! Today, there are more than 100,000 certified Zumba dance instructors worldwide.
Through basic Latin dance techniques, Zumba gives you a good cardio workout while toning the different muscle groups such as your arms and glutes. You’ll have so much fun that you’ll forget how much time has passed—or how many calories you’ve burnt!
Here’s a DVD to get you going: Glute Pursuit: Legs and Glutes Toning.
3. Line Dance
Remember the pre-pandemic days, when folks would get together in groups and effortlessly move their feet in sync to country music?
Birthed from old folk dances, line dancing grew popular in the 1970s and 1980s as a social gathering activity for celebrations. As the name suggests, the dance is performed in lines and no physical interaction is needed.
Don’t be deceived by its calm and relatively slow movements, though—your concentration and memory will be put to the test as the choreography focuses a lot on coordinating your feet and directional changes.
There may be fewer line dancing activities and classes these days, but you can still learn and practise the basics from step-by-step instructional books such as Christy Lane’s Complete Book of Line Dancing by Christy Lane and DVDs like Line Dance 101: A Quick-Start Guide to Line Dancing and Country Line Dance.
While you’re at it, try completing the “four walls” challenge! Here’s what a “wall” means in line dancing:
4. Belly Dance
Believe it or not, belly dancing is a dance style that dates back to ancient times. Through the centuries, it has seen migration between continents — namely South Asia, the Middle East and Northern Africa—where local styles are moulded by the culture of the region.
My personal interest in belly dancing lies in the exotic ethnic tunes and how captivating it can be, especially when the dancer isolates parts of their body and moves in sync with the percussion.
If you’re inspired to spice up your workout, check out the book Quintessential Bellydance: Beginner Class Companion by Evyenia Karmi and the DVD Bellydance Fitness for Beginners.
5. Social Dance (or Ballroom Dance)
Think Beauty and the Beast waltzing across the ballroom or Vanessa Williams swiftly changing partners on the dance floor in the film Dance with Me. Social dancing has evolved with time and is now better known as ballroom dancing. You’ll find people doing it on many occasions: weddings, cruises, parties… so why not equip yourself with some social dancing skills? You’ll never know when it’ll save you some face or guarantee a good time on the dance floor.
Try it out with a family member or a housemate with Ballroom Dance for Beginners as your guide!
There you have it—five different dance styles for you to experiment with. If you’d like to dive deeper into the relationship between dance and well-being, check out the resources below. May these titles awaken your inner dancer and keep your body in shape!
From left to right:
The Joy of Movement — Kelly McGonical | Physical Copy, eBook, Audiobook
The Tango Effect — Kate Swindlehurst | eBook
Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery — Eric Franklin | Physical Copy
Finding Balance: Fitness, Training, and Health for a Lifetime in Dance — Gigi Berardi | Physical Copy
