Dancing for Weight Loss

Have you ever thought about dancing for weight loss? If you loved dancing in the past, or if your child dream was to star with a dancing class someday, may be it’s time to actually start doing it.
The health benefits of dancing are so many and I am not sure If you have ever thought about some of them.

Dancing is better than the traditional cardio workout

As we all know cardio is good and low-impact cardio workout is even better. Running, aerobics, jogging and dancing can improve your overall health, but in more details, it will increase body stamina, improve cardiovascular health, strengthen muscles and bone structure, increase lungs capacity and stave off illnesses like heart disease and diabetes. By doing cardio workout everyday, you will strengthen the heart as it is a muscle and lower your blood sugar and cholesterol levers.

Many fitness experts agree that dancing can give you a lot more than the traditional cardio fitness exercises like running on the treadmill for example. It will not only improve your cardiovascular endurance and body composition, but it will also improve muscular endurance and flexibility. The benefits of dancing are not limited to these only. You will improve balance, coordination, power, agility, reactivity and speed.

But there are dancing and dancing. Some slow couple dances like ballroom dances do not qualify as cardio workout, so be sure to select dinamic and fast dances. The main idea here is to rise the heart rate and to start burn calories. With fast dancing you can burn as many calories as running and swimming. The modern dances like Zumba and Pilates are used for weight loss by millions of people around the world.

Zumba

This dance is a new hot dance and its popularity in the world of fitness grows daily. It is a Latin dance aerobics that combines cardio workout and dancing. While zumbing you are not only dancing, but you also do your fitness training. The difference is that you enjoy doing it, the opposite of doing your regular exersing routine. Everytime you do something different and new and if you love dancing, you should not get board with it. One of the greatest things about zumba is that you are dancing with the modern sounds of Latin rythms such as salsa, merengue, reggaeton.

While dancing and enjoying with other buddies, you also lose exess weight and get your body in shape.
Zumba goes beyond the classic aerobics because in the first 45 minutes you do cardio workout and in the last 15 minutes you are doing special exercising oriented to your body areas that needs more attention. For example you can address abdomen, legs and buttocks.

Pilates

Pilates is cobination of exercises and stretching that was created nearly a century ago by Joseph Pilates. It is a mix of ballet, yoga and callanetics. It is very popular among the dancers across the globe.

Pilates method works great to tighten and elongate muscles without straining the bones thus it works for your body, but it also works for your mind as it emphasis on concentration and breathing thought your workout. The exercises are developed to involve the so-called power plant all the time. The power plant includes the abdomen, waist and buttocks, which are of a great importance for person’s great looking figure and overall body shape. If you’ve managed to achieve physical tone and flexibility, and have felt stress relieved at the end of your Pilates sessions then you already know what is Pilates all about.

Belly Dance

The “Belly dance” term comes from the French phrase “danse du ventre”. Despite its name this dance involves every part of the body. However the most featured body part is the hips. Belly dance is so popular from India and North Africa across Europe and North America to Australia or in short – all over the globe.

Belly dance has so many different forms depending on country and region that I will probably need a few pages to describe them all. In short the greatest differences are in costumes and the dance style itself. As belly dance travels across the world, and especially the Western world, new costumes and styles have evolved and popularity has grown enormously. However there is one common thing about contemporary belly dance all over the world and it’s the performers themselves – they are all women.

No matter which dance you choose to workout make sure you dance at least 3 times per week. Otherwise you will not see any weight loss effect, beautiful body shaping or muscle strengthening. Eventually you will give up dancing and all you’ll remember in time would be the good music you used to listen and danced to once or twice a week…which will be very sad, as dancing is fun and energising. And if you share your dance sessions with a friend you will get the most amusing body shaping, muscle strengthening and weight loss workout in the world.