Dance yourself to fitness with a street dance workout

Fitness First Dance Class Review:

It’s that time of year when everyone’s trying to get in shape for the summer so when my old gym, Fitness First introduced a new timetable which included new street dance classes, I decided to try it out.

According to Fitness First, the class was created exclusively by internationally acclaimed street dance troupe and Britain’s Got Talent winners ‘Diversity’, to revolutionize ‘traditional’ workout. So if you are not a treadmill fan or just want to get your cardio workout a different way, then this might be the class for you.

On average, a street dance workout burns anything from 400 – 1000 calories but it really depends on how much effort you put into it.

I made my way to my nearest Fitness first gym in Brixton last week, somewhat apprehensive about being back in a gym. After a half hour delay, the class finally began.

The class:

It was an all female class with a male teacher.

I wouldn’t call the class strictly street dance, it was more like a mixture of street, Soca, hiphop, and a little bit of ballet thrown in.

The dance moves combined strength, conditioning, balance and flexibility.

Each routine is set to a different genre of music which made the class really interesting.

There were several variations of exercises and routines meaning boredom never set in.

The teacher was patient, it was a small class so he made sure everyone got the moves before moving on to the next.

He taught 7-9 different moves individually which at the end when performed together became a dance routine.

Verdict

I’ll choose a dance fitness class over a treadmill or aerobics class any day. It was fun, you actually workout and burn calories without realising and you learn new dance moves you can use on a night out.

Twisting and moving the body in different ways during the dance class made sure I used muscles I hadn’t  used for a long time.

For someone who is constantly sitting behind a desk, I’ve niggles and muscle soreness which makes climbing stairs and certain movements a pain but I barely felt it during the dance class and in the end, I felt better than I had in months.

Click here for videos of my visit to the Fitness First dance class.