Zumba For Beginners

Zumba turns exercising into a dance party - improving your fitness level and cardio health - while burning off the fat! A Zumba fitness session uses Latin dance music and moves, to motivate you to keep burning calories, for anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes.

Scientifically, Zumba uses the top-rated type of exercise for improving your heart health and burning off ugly bodyfat: Interval Training. For those wanting to lose weight, Zumba can help you burn as much as 600 calories per hour!

Fat Burning and Body Toning

The actual classes resemble dance choreography, with a variety of dance pace ranging from slow merengue to fast salsa. During the Zumba session, you will find yourself doing standard dance moves, cardio moves, bodyweight strength-training moves, and maybe even some jumps - all to highly-motivating fun music.

On top of all the benefits for your heart and bodyweight, Zumba also gives you a full-body workout. This means that almost every muscle group winds up getting toned and sleeker. However, since the classes are mostly made up of women, special attention is paid to toning your legs, hips, abs, and butt.

The only problem reported by most people trying Zumba, is that the instructors are trained to explain little (or nothing) but rather, use their body and hand motions to signal the upcoming moves and how to do them. This can be a problem for beginners and even intermediate Zumba followers. The solution is to use a Zumba-equivalent exercise program, where the moves are fully explained with free detailed videos... read more...

Is Zumba an Effective Way to Lose Weight?

You've heard about Zumba - everybody has - it's very popular all over the world.

And you've heard that it makes working out and losing weight, lots of fun! And you've heard that it teaches you a lot of cool dance moves, drawing from Salsa, Cha Cha, Merengue, and other Latin styles.

Plus, one of it's best features is that it's non-judgmental. You can use your own style, following the instructor's moves but with your own, personal flair.

But does it work? Does it improve your fitness level and most importantly, help you to burn fat effectively?

This question was recently answered, during a study done by a team of Exercise Scientists.

The Scientific Results

The study was done with a group of all-female volunteers, (but the results most likely apply to males as well).

First, each participant was scientifically tested to establish her pre-Zumba fitness level.

Then, each participant wore a heart-rate monitor while working out in a standard Zumba session.

Finally, to make the results as truthful as possible, all sessions were taught by the same Zumba-certified instructor, while the session durations were varied in length (from half-hour to an hour).

When the study was over, they found that the average Zumba participant burned 369 calories (or 9.5 calories per minute). This is quite a high fat-burning rate!

Their average heart rate was 154 beats per minute (or about 80% of their maximum heart rate capacity). Recommended fitness guidelines state that you should be working out somewhere between 65% and 90% of your maximum, to burn fat and improve your cardio health level.

The scientists also scrutinized the heart-rate monitor recordings, and found that Zumba sessions resemble the best type of workout profile: the "Interval Training" type of workout. This means that Zumba burns much more bodyfat than steady-rate exercises, (like jogging, running, treadmill, elliptical, bicycle, etc).

In fact, Zumba was found to burn more calories than even step aerobics, power yoga, and kickboxing!

Conclusion

Overall, Zumba feels like a dance party, but your heart and bodyfat think it's a highly effective workout. You burn off a lot more fat than other forms of exercise and cardio classes, even though it's much easier and more enjoyable to do.

The bottom line is that Zumba is one of the best ways to improve your fitness level, get healthier, and burn off ugly fat. The only problem is, the steps can be very difficult to learn, at first. To remove this problem, check out this Zumba-type workout plan, that comes with free video instructions to help you learn the moves quickly and easily... read more...