An Intro to: Zumba Gold
It occurred to me the other day that while I wrote intro posts on Zumba Toning and Aqua Zumba, it hadn’t bothered to go back and finish off the rest of the specialities (Zumba Gold & Zumbatomic) so I thought I would do just that.
What is Zumba Gold?
Right from the mouth of Zumba itself:
Zumba® Gold takes the Latin and International dance rhythms you know and love from regular Zumba® classes and brings them to the active older adult, beginner participant and other special populations that may require modifications.
So who is the Zumba Gold Participant?
As mentioned above, many Zumba Gold participants are active older adults, beginner participants and anyone else that for whatever reason doesn’t feel up to participating in a regular Zumba class but still loves to dance. I have participants in Zumba Gold that also attend regular Zumba classes but like to supplement regular Zumba with the low impact Zumba Gold once a week. They find in Zumba Gold they have more time to work on perfecting their footwork, and more time to enjoy the music.
What makes Zumba Gold different? Isn’t it just a slowed down version of Zumba?
No. And yes…
Many of the songs I use in regular Zumba classes I will also use in my Zumba Gold class, but the choreography is usually a little bit different. I will swap out any high impact moves with low impact alternatives, I leave out a lot of the hip movements, swivelling and pivoting and any jerky or uncontrolled movements.
There are some moves that are always performed at half tempo in Zumba Gold, but many of the moves you know and love from regular Zumba classes are the same in Zumba Gold. A salsa that I would teach in my regular class would be taught the same in Zumba Gold except I would “tame it down” so to speak no order to make it appropriate for the participants. That’s not to say that I don’t break out into full on Zumba craziness now and again – because I do – but I do that to entertain the class (and only for a few seconds at a time), I don’t intend for them to follow my lead on those occasions {and they rarely do, generally they break out into fits of laughter and giggles}.
Keep in mind that there are varying degrees of Zumba Gold classes as well. One of my friends has a class of Zumba Gold participants whose average age is 55-60, so her class is going to be considerably more high intensity and have perhaps more difficult choreography than mine as my average participant age is in the 70′s (with a number of participants well below the 70 mark – and a number well above the 80 mark!). As with regular Zumba classes, you work at your own level so even though I have a vast range of ages and abilities everyone is getting a workout appropriate for them, and everybody is having fun, and that is the most important part!
I am new to exercise – do I HAVE to start out in a Zumba Gold class?
Absolutely not. Those new to exercise are more than welcome in regular Zumba classes, please go where ever you feel most comfortable. While it came be really helpful to start in Zumba Gold where the choreography is a bit easier, and the whole class is low impact it really is up to you where you want to go.
The same goes for pregnant women. If you were active and participating in Zumba before becoming pregnant, chances are (with your doctor’s approval of course) you can continue participating in regular Zumba classes as long as you are comfortable doing so. Or you may feel that you want to go to the low impact Zumba Gold for your pregnancy, and/or during the first few weeks returning to exercise after giving birth (you will need your doctors approval before returning to any exercise after giving birth).
How long are the classes?
The class I teach is normally 45-50 minutes in length, but this can vary from instructor to instructor and class to class. Most Zumba Gold classes are 30, 45, or 60 minutes in length.
If its low impact will I get a good workout?
Yes! I have a pretty high aerobic capacity so my heart rate doesn’t really get high during Zumba Gold, but I do sweat and I do need to drink lots of water. I’ve worn my heart rate monitor a few times and in the 45 minute class I burned around 300 calories, which isn’t shabby!
What should I wear? Do I need to bring anything with me?
Wear whatever you can move comfortably in – a T-shirt or sleeveless shirt, pants or shorts and a pair of sneakers. Bring a bottle of water, and if you are someone who tends to sweat when you exercise, a small towel wouldn’t be a bad idea either!
How do I find out if there are any classes in my area?
Check out the “find a class” section on the Zumba website. All you need to do is enter your address and it will bring up a listing of all of the classes in your area
I think that’s about it! If you have any other questions regarding Zumba Gold or Zumba Gold classes please leave ‘em in the comments. Have a good weekend 
This and That
Hi everyone! I haven’t managed to get in and post since last week mostly because I was teaching all my classes last week while not feeling well. This week while I’m feeling better some of my physical injuries/issues have been bothering me so I’ve been trying to spend my downtime either sleeping or chilling out trying to let my body get back to 100%.
I don’t like leaving the old blog sitting around for so long though so tonight I thought I’d share some random things that have happened recently, or things I’ve done that I didn’t feel were worth a dedicated post of their own but were still interesting.
Today I made tortillas.
I used this recipe that I found on pinterest. They were pretty easy and turned out quite well. The recipe was suppose to make 12 tortillas but I forgot what I was doing and ended up making 16 so they were a bit smaller than they would have been had I follow the recipe more closely. It’s a little disturbing that tortillas in the store have so many ingridants in them when these only have four – flour, shortening, water and salt. For my first try I think they were a success.
Over the weekend I noticed that my balance (which is normally quite good) was really off. I couldn’t figure out what the problem was until I found this little charmer on my ankle
which came complete with some swelling. Looks like I rolled my ankle and forgot about it (not a surprise). It sure made the past couple days of teaching extra fun :/ thankfully it’s feeling better today.
For Christmas I got Zumba 2 for the Wii. I wanted it because as a Zumba instructor I somehow felt I needed to beat the game in order to prove myself. I’ve played it a few times with almost always the same result. For most of the songs Gina or Tanya “instruct” I’ll get 4 or 5 stars right off the bat, and any song Beto instructs I’ll stink big-time. There were a few times I only got 1 frigging star. J would watch me and say he knew something was wrong because I was hitting all the moves but not getting any credit for them. ”Suzi, I don’t know what you’re going to do about Ringo” he’d say (we’ve decided to call Beto “Ringo” instead. We’re weird like that). So this past Saturday I was playing it while he was on the treadmill. As usual any song with “Ringo” in it I’d suck at. Finally J asked me to give him the game box/book. Turns out this whole time I’ve been wearing the controller on the wrong hip. It’s suppose to be on your right hip and I’ve had it on my left. I blame it on 1) being a lefty and 2) always reversing my moves when teaching a class. It seriously never occurred to me that I might have it on backwards. Which leads me to wonder – how did I ever manage to get 5 starts on all those other songs if I had the controller on the wrong way?
I can’t wait to see the new movie, “Haywire.” Gina Carano has been my favourite athlete for a number of years (I stand by what I said in the blog post I wrote about her two years ago, I still want to be like her when I grow up!) and I’m super stoked to see her kicking butt on the big screen. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll be at the theatre this weekend
Speaking of Gina and her kicking butt, man have I ever become some sorry little weakling. I was doing another strength workout on the weekend and it was a sad state of affairs. Even back in the summer I could bust out full push-ups pretty decently, now I can’t even go all the way to the floor on a knee push-up. I’ve lost so much muscle in the past 6 months it’s horrible. And to make matters worse, I’m still teaching so many classes I haven’t figured out how to get 3 or 4 strength workouts in/week like I need to. Then I go and watch this video of Gina getting her a$$ kicked and I think of what I baby I am. My workout on Saturday was like: do 1 set of exercises, sit down and watch TV for 5 minutes, do 5 sad little knee push-ups, watch more TV. It was really shameful. I need to get my act together.
I’ve been watching The Tudors on Netflix for the past couple weeks. I was down to the last 4 episodes of season 4 (which was the final season) when they took it off Netflix (it said that it would be taken down Jan 24th, but I was hoping that meant at the end of the day Jan 24th – it would seem that’s not what they meant). I searched YouTube to see if someone had posted the episodes there but can’t find them. As far as I can tell I’ll need to either pay $1.99/episode to watch them on Showtime, or $2.99/episode to buy them on iTunes. Crap.
While Jen is in Mexico, I had planned to start watching “Dexter” as I know she just finished season 1 so we could watch it “together” when she got back, but last night I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be watching a show like that by myself at 11pm so instead I watched “Ramona and Beezus.” It’s just about the same thing right? 
Well, that’s it for now!
Have any of you seen “Haywire” yet?
It looks like it’s got pretty good reviews so far. Back in the early fall when I watched the trailer on YouTube, some goof had commented saying, “This girl sucks, they should have hired Uma Thurman, Kate Beckinsale or another actress that at least knows how to fight for the part.” To which someone replied, “She’s a professional MMZ fighter you idiot.” Nuff said.
