ZUMBA AYYYYEEEE

So, I am not the most coordinated. And I NEVER claimed to be the most athletic. Especially in the presence of my overly- athletic siblings. But I have come to enjoy working out since I’ve been at college- mixing up my workouts- and just being generally active.
During high school, I stayed on varsity tennis all four years, despite my lack of ability to climb the rungs of the competitive ladder. I wasn’t even too keen on the idea of team sports, hence the choosing of tennis. But I think it was the overall release that I enjoyed by devoting hours of may day to something that wasn’t all mind consuming. And just like I stretch my mind throughout the day in Chemistry and Calculus, I enjoyed hitting a tennis ball, running lines on the courts and hours of serving practice to get the little yellow ball into the white square.
When I came to Baylor, I ran around too much freshman year with friends to worry about finding a tennis replacement- that and I was working 30 hours a week on my feet at Outback steakhouse. But once I started sophomore year I decided to check out the Baylor gym- that’s when I started running. It was something I never really liked to do, but it seems like something that people make themselves do- so I tried it. I was able to watch TV and study or read a magazine all while getting my exercises.

So for three years this is something I just made myself do about five times a week. It wasn’t till law school that I realized the correlation between the “working out” and my better moods. Especially when I had been cooped up study all day, getting to the gym to go run, or lift weights was the highlight of my day (pretttyyy nerdy).
Now I have discovered work out classes- basically the past two years- under the bearobics program and the Baylor student life center and golds gym . I started with simple weight and cross training classes and then adventured off to Zumba, Because I have never been athletic- I was extremely embarrassed to start going to these classes that require a smidge of coordination. I was never a dancer (although I took years of tap, ballet and jazz- thanks mom- and despite my hereditary predisposition to rhythm – my mother and aunt won nationals in drill team in high school ’76) but I realized that if I went to enough classes, I would at least be worked out enough that it supplemented my want to get on the treadmill that day. Pretty soon I realized it was nice to mix up my work out that way, and I was having more and more fun releasing my inhibitions in weight class or Zumba- a high energy dancing class. Zumba even has it’s own Wikipedia page- apparently it’s “ created with specific beats and tempo changes, transitions the workout from one toning, strengthening or cardio move to another, and targets every major muscle group in the body”. And that’s pretty much it. But an hour doing that goes by a lot faster than running.

I started taking my sister this summer to classes with me and she shows me up so bad. First of all, she’s an all star pitcher, once proclaimed “Crawford Hurler stifles McGregor “ in the local paper- those are some pretty bad-a descriptive nouns and adjectives for a softball pitcher. And not only is she inherently athletic- she also has had dance moves since she was born. She taught me how to fast dance before my first big junior high dance- when she was only 7 or 8. Throughout high school we would dance in our room so I would be loose enough not to make a fool out of myself when I went to dances. And this ability apparently also translates to Zumba. I was so much less inhibited whenever she would come with me to class, and now I’m having to work at it by myself because she has been very busy taking 17 hours of class this summer and working and babysitting and running the world.

While I continue to miss my work out buddy, I am definitely up for all new things now. Whether it’s sprinting around with my boyfriend Nick, playing tennis, or joining the workout classes with all the Baylor Freshman- I know that it improves my mood and gives me the push that I need throughout the week. Hopefully I will have enough time during PC to at least run a little bit. What worries me is that even my most devout gym junky friends completely abandoned work outs in favor of studying and sleeping. I hope I don’t get that exhausted. But tomorrow’s another day, and today- after work- I will be attending 15 minute ABS class as well as 7:00 ZUMBA!