Zumba is back by popular demand. In case you don’t know, zumba is a Latin fitness aerobic dance class, which is now offered at the McNiff Fitness Center at 7 p.m. on Mondays.
“It’s suppose to feel like a party,” Ciarra Joyner, assistant Director in the Office of Residence Life, said.
“You’re not supposed to know your working out.”
She said your just suppose to have fun and burn a lot of calories in the process.
According to Joyner, the workout starts out with a warm-up before they get into the traditional Latin dancing and other dances from around the world.
Unlike other workouts, she won’t be doing a move and then teaching, she will do the move and everyone will move with her.
She said she will teach it in progression from easy to hard and if they cant get the hard movement they can stick with what they can do.
“I think one good thing about it is that people who don’t work out a lot don’t feel intimidated,” Joyner said.
The McNiff Fitness Center offers 29 classes to get in shape.
There are 13 different instructors. All the instructors are certified to teach in at least one group fitness class, including yoga, according to Katie Flotz-White, Coordinator of Campus Recreation.
“I think a lot of people forget that yoga is a part of it,” White said.
“Some of our older instructors have been doing this for 15-20 years, so they have hours and hours of training.”
Stephanie Holz teaches a spin class on Fridays at noon.
She is certified through the American Fitness and Aerobic Association for primary aerobics and through Cycle Reebok for spinning.
“My class is different each week,” Holz said.
“I use different music to simulate [the] different terrain that one would experience if they were riding a bike outside.”
Some of the yoga instructors have over 500 hours of training.
They increased their yoga classes because they talked to counselors and students and found out there was a need for more yoga.
“We have a stressed student body,” White said. “And yoga’s great for that.”
She said she wants to offer a good variety of classes for all students.
She also said that ab classes are popular, so they offer several of those. There is also a pilates course and various kinds of cardio workouts for choose from.
To contact Mandy Carr email her at acarr@ut.edu.
