Zumba craze

Times Reporter

 

A not-so-new fitness craze has taken over, and can be found almost everywhere, including right here in Strathmore. Alberto (Beto) Perez, who was trying to bring his Latin-inspired workout classes to America, is the creator of Zumba. After finally being invited to teach a Saturday morning class in Miami Perez was stuck in traffic and late to start the class. Not knowing how to say ‘I’m sorry’, he just played the music and found the class loved it, and so Zumba was born.  

“It is huge, it’s like a tsunami, every health club does Zumba,” said Brigitte Lessard, owner of Strathmore’s Curves.

Curves offers their own variation of Zumba. 

“When you do it with the Curves circuit the Zumba is simplified because you can’t get in the super fancy (moves) because you only have a minute…but it’s very high energy,” said Lessard.

“When we do the Curves Zumba, now the circuit training instead of being 30 seconds is now one minute. So you do one minute on the strength training machine, and one minute of Zumba.”

Curves Zumba is for women only, and is available to anyone who has a Curves membership. The youngest member participating in the workout is 13, and the oldest is over 70.

“A lot of people say it’s the perfect workout because it does your strength training, your cardio, your brain, everything. And we try to keep within the 30 minutes as well. That’s one of the big things about Curves is the workouts are 30 minutes because women are busy…the whole Curves concept has always been to keep it 30 minutes,” said Lessard.

“Let’s face it, it gets boring to do the same routine all the time. So with the Zumba what happens is now you’re learning something new, but we do the routine for maybe six weeks and then we switch everything. We get a whole new set, with new songs, new dance, so it keeps it fresh.”

On Monday nights Zumba is being taught by Lessard and Vicki Lou Hofer, who are both certified instructors. Wednesday nights will be with new instructor Tracey Stokoe, and there will be a Saturday morning Zumba class offered as well. 

To find out more about Curves Zumba contact them at 403-901-1144. Lessard said anyone who mentions hearing about it from this article will get a free week to try it out. 

Zumba is also offered for both men and women through Wheatland Further Education. 

“Anytime people come to us with ideas or courses or sessions that they would like to see happen in Strathmore and the surrounding area we always try and do that. We had several requests for Zumba, so we just went ahead and it went over very well,” said Joyce Bazant. 

To register with Wheatland Further Education call them at 403-934-5785.