When you are trying to find a way to lose weight that will also be fun and energizing, you will see that dancing makes for an excellent option.
Many people have struggles when trying to lose weight, as you have to try to cut out a lot of the things that you love out of your diet. You also embark on long exercise routines and try to be strict in many ways to get results. Many people feel as if they are not losing weight fast enough when going through with regular diet and exercise regimes, which is why they will often push themselves too hard. Many of these dieters will fall off the wagon and give up on their efforts, only to turn to a new plan to lose weight and start in on the cycle all over again. The alternative outcome often includes working too hard and sometimes becoming injured as a result. You can never go from no exercise to intense moves and expect it to end well.
On the other hand, dance is something that can be fun, social, and something that you enjoy doing. You can go to dance classes to learn new moves and have fun, yet you are moving at the same time to enjoy regular exercise on a weekly basis. The result will be great weight loss while you are burning calories in each class, and you will have a notable boost in energy so that you can build up resistance to injury. As a whole, you will become more fit and if you end up doing additional exercises on top of the dance classes, you will find it to be more successful and you can lose weight a lot faster and steadier.
Many people tend to struggle for months while involved in the wrong weight loss program. Instead of being lost in an endless diet and exercise cycle, dance can help you to become more toned, have more energy and successfully watch the pounds melt away.
Dancing is a fun activity that you can enjoy alone and with friends. It offers numerous fitness and health benefits when it is done as a form of exercise.
Why Is Dancing Good For You?
People who love dancing have endless praises for it as an activity that they regularly do to boost their cardiovascular fitness. Dancing usually amps up your brain power and increases your overall well-being.
Dancing is all about movements that range from the slow and the fast. It can leave you feeling breathless depending on how fast the dance is, and such movements can burn calories. Fast dancing is a great cardiovascular workout.
A study on the effects of dance on people recovering from heart problems found that waltzing for around 20 minutes three time a week increased their heart rate more than regular exercises. It was also found that waltzing safely improved the overall anaerobic and VO2 threshold.
Another study on ballet dancing found that the dancers’ bodies endured a particular loading while dancing that boosted their significant bone strength in comparison to people who do not dance.
Below are a few dance styles that are a top workout choice.
For Weight Loss: Zumba
Zumba classes are an excellent choice for an activity that is consistently intense. The dance is characterized by a pace that can burn up to 250 calories when done for more than thirty minutes. Zumba is fun and easy to pick up.
For Strength: Pole Dancing
Pole dancing is a dance that comprises a string of gymnastic exercises centered about the body weight. The dance works all muscle groups, and the various dancing routines give a full-body workout that strengthens the muscles and the body as a whole, both physically and mentally.
For Team Players: Swing
Swing is a dance between two, so you should pair up with a buddy for the swing classes. As a workout, swing builds your motivation since you have another person encouraging you. It is a social activity with some significant physical contact that helps release stress that may have a negative impact on your weight loss ambitions.
Workouts can sometimes feel like a chore, but with Zumba, a workout doesn’t have to feel like a workout let alone a chore. Zumba is a fun, social experience and exercise is just one of the perks. It is a fast-paced, upbeat and infectious exercise that keeps everyone moving. Because it takes place in a group, Zumba is one of the best ways to get all of your friends in on this exercise routine.
One of the best benefits is that it is a mind booster. It is the ideal workout to take all of your stress that you accumulate and just dance it out. The music is so upbeat and the moves are so energetic that your brain releases its mood boosting endorphins. Join and Zumba class, and you will see your worries disappear as you lose yourself in the moves and the music.
Zumba is also a social experience. This is also a health benefit because you get to meet and become friends with interesting people You can go to Zumba a few times a week and before you know it you have a whole new group of Zumba friends. Instructors often host Zumba parties for corporations, bachelorette parties, birthday parties and more.
The anaerobic benefits are what really improve your health. As the music plays fast, you have to keep up to the beat. This builds up your endurance and it only takes a few workouts to do this. It is a great way to maintain excellent cardiovascular health and it increases how much oxygen you can breathe during each high-intensity class.
One other great health benefit of doing Zumba is improving your coordination. You have to think about many of the moves as you learn them but once you do, you will have better coordination which is important to have as you age.
Not many people understand the negative effect their posture can have on their health. Hours of sitting behind computers at work or home have left many of us with a weak lower spine and rounded and hunched shoulders. This not only damages the spine and causes back ache, but it also inhibits proper breathing, may lead to increased stress levels and can have adverse effects on your confidence – did you know that your body language and posture can inform your mental state?
However, to be a good dancer, you have to consider your posture since most dance moves require that your shoulders be rolled back, and your chest and chin lifted up. Constantly remembering to straighten up can ultimately have a positive impact on your posture; something that may lead to a healthier, balanced musculature as well as improved breathing and no back pain!
Dance demands flexibility since this is required for most of the high kicks and similar, rather flamboyant moves involved in dancing. The good thing is that a majority of dance classes incorporate prolonged warm-up sessions that include lots of stretching.
By improving flexibility, you not only boost your athletic performance, but you also make it harder for you to suffer from a range of injuries. If your interest is in building muscle by going to a gym, you will be interested to know that flexibility exercises offered in dance classes can improve your range of motion leading to fuller-looking muscles.
Finally, dancing is one of the best ways to improve your moods, and the health benefits presented cannot be underrated. Just like any other form of exercise, dancing will not only help boost the production of natural antidepressants such as endorphins, but it is also fun. Considering that dance is something you do with a partner, it is also an excellent way to build closer and stronger relationships while developing well-toned, athletic bodies.
Dance is something that has showed incredible benefits for mental health. A study author by the name of Anna Duberg from the Sweden Center for Health Care Sciences noted that even though there were problems like stress and other challenges in adolescent girls, being involved in dance can bring about a positive experience for all participants. Dance also has the potential of contributing to brand new healthy habits.
A study was done through Swedish researchers on 112 teenaged girls that had been struggling with stress, depression, anxiety and back and neck pain. Half of the girls studied attended dance classes on a weekly basis, while the other half did not. The girls that were in the dance classes enjoyed improvements to their mental health while reporting a boost in mood. The positive impact lasted for roughly eight months after the dance classes ended.
There was another study that was done through Debbie Duignan from the WA Alzheimers Association that explored used of Wu Tao Dance as a form of therapy for people who have dementia. It had been shown that the Wu Tao Dance was able to reduce the various symptoms of agitation often found in those with dementia. There is complex mental coordination that is involved with dancing that helps to activate both motor and sensory circuits. Whenever someone dances, the brain is stimulated by the dance movements as well as the sound of the music. PET imaging shows that the brain regions that are activated in dance learning and performance, such as somatosensory cortex, cerebellum, motor cortex and basal ganglia. Dancing shows to have benefits for the brain, including strengthened neural connections and memory improvement. Dance can both reduce the symptoms that are associated with dementia, but it can help with reducing the risk of dementia development to begin with. All of this is shown in a New England Journal of Medicine study from 2003 by the researchers from Albert Einstein College Of Medicine.