What Kind of Workout Is Flamenco Dancing?
At its core, flamenco dancing – like any type of vigorous dance exercise – gives your body a cardiovascular workout. Put simply, cardio exercise causes both your heart rate and breathing rate to increase, which encourages weight loss and leads to improvements in the circulatory and respiratory system. Each style of dance provides a different type of workout, and the vigorous, lower-body intensive flamenco style is no exception.
The signature stamping motions of flamenco gives lower-body muscles such as the calves, hamstrings and thighs a hearty workout. On a secondary level, flamenco works the upper body, as it tasks you with holding your arms above your head and performing sweeping motions with them. To maintain the elegant posture essential to flamenco, you'll need to engage your core muscles as well. While dance exercise won't bulk your muscles up to bodybuilder proportions, it does help tone and define them.
Compared to other dance styles, flamenco offers a highly rhythmic, vigorous and lively technique. With activity comes calorie burn, and flamenco is no slouch in that department. According to estimates from “Fitness Magazine,” an hour of flamenco dancing burns about 290 calories. Your burn may vary based on your body weight and the intensity of your workout.
Performed as part of a regular cardiovascular exercise routine, flamenco dancing may prevent heart disease, reduce blood pressure and regulate your body weight. Regular cardio also leads to increased endurance, healthy blood sugar levels, a stronger immune system and even reduced stress and improved sleep patterns, among other benefits.
Because flamenco requires you to keep a straight-backed posture – specifically, an elongated spine with your shoulders held back and hips tucked in – it encourages healthy posture outside the dance floor. Flamenco's footwork puts a load on the bones of the lower-body, increasing bone density and helping stave off conditions such as osteoporosis. The complex footwork of flamenco encourages concentration, and its focus on expressing passionate emotions may even have a therapeutic effect.