Make Dance Fitness Apart of Your Workout Routine
Share
Dance fitness is one of the most underrated workouts that delivers amazing physical and mental health benefits. Different than your traditional dance class, dance fitness is typically a steady-state cardio workout, where you are moving constantly with little breaks between 30 mins to an hour. During this workout, you go through a series of movements that move the “gross muscles” in your body, engaging all major muscle groups from your arms, legs and torso. Done to upbeat music, dance fitness workouts keeps the energy high by slowly raising your heart rate, and keeping it at a pace that forces you to breath heavily, and even release sweat, without entirely losing your breath. The point: through steady state cardio, the body uses the fat stored in your body for energy, along with improving your body’s ability to intake oxygen during exercise. Doing this allows you to overtime, through consistency, lose weight and strengthen your cardiovascular health.
In addition to the science behind the workout, dance fitness is incredible for boosting endorphins through movement and music. By moving your body to the beat, serotonin is released, enhancing your mood, causing you to feel good, happier and more deeply connected to your body. Whether it may be dancing to soca, reggae, hip hop, or a combo of all three, these workouts have been proven to promote brain stimulation and improve long-term memory; with research supporting its ability to improve our body’s fine motor skills.
To get the most benefits from the workout, look for a class that follows the principles of heart rate training: one that starts with a light warm-up to a heart rate that is consistently elevated and remains at that state until the end of class, and into your cool down. Also, look for a class that incorporates some muscle conditioning, like squats, lunges, abdominal activation and even bicep curls, adding intensity and strength-building movements to your workout.
Dance fitness has become a go-to workout for improving moods, and just having fun. Every workout doesn’t need to be intense. Sometimes the body and even the mind just might be in the mood for a bit of boost, along with some light moves and grooves, to reach your daily physical activity goals — all while of course, moving your hips to your favourite tunes.