FITNESS
Novel workouts strive to be next Zumba
February 17, 2011
Trish Crawford
LIVING REPORTER
Daena Ramsay is hooked on Zumba, the dance-party fitness craze.
She’s lost 20 pounds since last fall when she started doing cha cha, rumba and flamenco steps in the Latin-inspired music program that has salsa-ed into 110 countries since it burst onto the fitness scene in 2001.
“I go three times a week, sometimes four or five,” says the 33-year-old Toronto homemaker with two young daughters. “It’s such a great work out and you get results in such a short period of time.”
But the biggest reason she goes to the dance class at the Light Up The Floor studio in Etobicoke “is the social aspect. It’s my new passion and it doesn’t even feel like going to class.”
After a long list of failed fitness attempts doing yoga, elliptical training and other aerobic classes, Ramsay says Zumba has staying power for her.
Remember Dance Dance Revolution, aqua fit, tai-bo, step classes and line dancing? Their popularity may come and go, but there’s always another craze coming in on their heels.
Fitness fads, especially those that include music or dancing, draw in people who might not otherwise exercise, says psychology professor Leora Swartzman of the University of Western Ontario. “When there’s a fad, there’s too much hype. However, if it makes it easier for some people to give exercise a try and go back and back again, then it’s a good thing.”
Research shows that people engage in moderate exercise for longer periods of time when they have a distraction such as television or music, Swartzman says. “People say ‘no pain, no gain.’ But that goes against our nature. Ultimately, we do need to be entertained.”
Swartzman, the clinical coordinator for the psychology department, tried Zumba once but didn’t like the Latin music. “If they’d played the Rolling Stones, I would have been there in a flash.”
Zumba, various spins on yoga and kettlebell workouts are the current fitness rages, says Rosie Posca, University of Toronto’s assistant manager of strength conditioning in the physical education department. Roughly 300 to 400 students and staff attend weekly Zumba classes, says Posca, adding that U of T staff were blown away by the avid response to the program. One night in January, 2010, the class hit 105 participants, many of whom used Twitter to arrange meeting there.
Posca says Zumba’s “group party atmosphere” is as much about socializing as it is about exercising, and credits popular dance shows like So You Think You Can Dance for igniting public interest in dancing.
People are looking for a “fusion type of workout” such as iron yoga (which incorporates free weights), she says, so they can do strength, stretching and aerobics together rather than three different types of programs.
Here, then, are some of the latest — and strangest — fitness fads taking shape around the GTA:
Zero-gravity yoga
At Suzanne Hennig’s Pickering gym, P3 Yoga and Pilates, the yoga teacher has students hanging from trapeze-style contraptions in a program she developed with a circus aerial artist.
She created “zero-gravity yoga” — one of dozens of aerial yoga programs springing up — as a way of engaging adventurous students who want something exciting and new.
Allan North, 29, a zero-gravity yoga student, says, “It’s not as hard as it looks. The biggest difference is that some of the postures have you with both feet off the ground, which can be unsettling.
“It’s not every day we can defy gravity.”
Meaghan Morse, a 24-year-old civilian police clerk, says the program does take some getting used to. “It’s definitely hard,” says Morse, who is working toward becoming a yoga instructor. “But I just fell in love with it.
“You use a lot of core strength to hold yourself up in the air.”
She attends a variety of different yoga classes, she says, so she has never become bored with it.
The secret to aerial yoga, according to Kristen Guscott, 28, is “you just don’t let go.” The yoga instructor has exercised her entire life and recognizes that people “tend to want to do what is cool and popular.”
She attends Hennig’s aerial class “because poses get stale and life is a continuous journey of learning new things.”
While Hennig, 42, does not teach the ubiquitous hot yoga, which she termed “The Tim Horton’s of yoga,” she does take yoga to the beach so participants can practice in the summer sun. She’s also lead classes on floating surf boards.
“We are still exploring the human capability,” she says. “We’re creatures of interest and if something looks fine, we say, ‘let’s explore.’ ”
Kettlebell
The kettlebell has been around in Russia for 100 years, says Shawn Mozen, 37, of Montreal, who brought the training system Canada in 2003.
But it’s still a new flavour for most. The weight with a handle is not lifted like dumbbells in weight training, but swung from hand to hand in a head-to-toe cardio and weight workout, says Mozen, who has trained more than 500 instructors in Canada and around the world.
Mozen thinks the reason for the program’s popularity is that “it does what it is promised to do.”
The lean muscle it builds is attractive to women and men who don’t want to get bulky as they get strong, he says. “I’ve never had to hype it. I just put (the kettle) in someone’s hand.”
Cardio tennis
The newest trend in tennis goes far beyond lobbing a ball back and forth across a net. Ely Schwartz, a spokesman for Tennis Ontario, describes it as a “fitness-based activity that involves tennis and a good cardiovascular workout.”
Some of the sideline activities include climbing ladders and jumping hurdles, so the body is never just standing still waiting to hit a ball, he says.
There are 50 licensed instructors in Ontario, who teach primarily in the summer months, but there is also an in-school program, he says.
Peter Jaklic, who teaches physical education at Rosethorne Junior Public School in Etobicoke, says students from Grade 1 to 5 played cardio tennis and loved it because “it’s a novelty.” Novelty is something a phys. ed. teacher learns very early to include in any school program, he says, adding, “I have to have variety. If I don’t make it fun, I’m dead.”
Douglas Cornell, who teaches at North Kipling Junior Middle School, says his Grade 7 and 8 boys are mostly from Southeast Asia and the Caribbean, and had no previous experience with tennis. This made cardio tennis an exciting new way to get a workout, he says.
Gravity Training System
Instead of using weights, the Gravity Training System uses its namesake to give you a workout. The key is an adjustable board that rolls back and forth on rails, with adjustable incline settings. Christie Ness, owner of Get Spun on Spadina Ave., says this is an “any ages” workout because the machine is adjusted for the weight and skill of each person using it.
“When I took my first class there was my boyfriend and me and a couple who were 65,” says Ness, who brought the machines to her gym two and a half years ago. Training sessions are held in small groups of five or less, and it is recommended to always use a trainer, as there is a knack to moving and adjusting the machine, she adds.
People like the speedy results of gravity training, she says, as it is a whole-body workout. Isolated training, such as working only abs or biceps, “is so old-fashioned,” she adds.
TRX Suspension Training
Donald Clark brought the TRX suspension system to his Yonge St. gym Sandstone three years ago and admits clients didn’t really take to it at first.
“It is huge in the United States, but people just looked at it here.”
Someone wrote on his Facebook page, “What is that?”
That might be because it seems intimidating to exercise while hanging from cloth straps, but Clark says it can be used by any age and level of ability. It’s good at developing core strength and balance, he says, and is starting to become popular with clients.
One of its greatest assets is that it can be taken anywhere, as the bands just fold up into a gym bag. An exercise set costs $189, and many people take them on business trips or to the cottage, says Clark, adding, “I take it to a park and hook it to a tree and do my exercises outside.”
Karaoke Spinning
It’s kind of boring to ride a bike that goes nowhere, says fitness instructor Dee Mangini, so she brought a karaoke machine to her spinning class.
Now, people smile, laugh — and sing — while peddling at Blazers Fitness, a gym in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. After reading about it in California in a fitness magazine, Mangini gave it a try because, let’s face it, exercise can be boring. “A lot of time exercise is mindless. It is a necessary evil. But if you can put a fun factor in there, boy that hour is over fast.”
Some class members expressed shyness at first, but “once the microphone was put in front of them, stardom set in.”
A brief survey of Toronto spinning establishments failed to unearth any singing cycling here, but it may only be a matter of time before this fad hits town.
tcrawford@thestar.ca