Dance your way to fun and fitness
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BY VIVI HOANG
THE TENNESSEAN
DECEMBER 3, 2007
Even after six bypass surgeries last year, Ed Chaney couldn’t wait to get back to the dance. The 67-year-old Madison real estate broker has been boogieing since he was 14 and he wasn’t going to let a little thing like a heart attack and its aftermath stop him. He belongs to the Nashville Dance Club and Nashville Swing Dance Club and shimmies three or four nights a week. In fact, dancing, he feels, was instrumental to his recovery.
“The heart is a muscle and like anything else, it needs to be exercised to get stronger,” he said. “One of my rehab things was to breathe deep. The dancing will cause you do that.” Ballroom dance is a fun way of socializing and staying in shape at the same time. That makes it a skill perfect for enjoying the Christmas’s season’s social gatherings, counterbalancing the troughs of holiday food you’re sure to face, and ushering in the New Year.
“You’re dancing, you’re meeting people, you’re laughing, you’re having a good time and – big bonus – you’re getting in shape,” said Donna Duda, spokeswoman for National Dance Club in Brentwood. Duda, who has ballroom danced for nine years, said before she began ballroom, she’d done Jazzercise and jogging and frustratingly plateaued in her weight loss. With dancing, she quickly saw results. “You’re constantly changing the way you’re working your muscles,” she said. “I saw an immediate effect. Within a month, I lost a dress size.”
Muscle into shape
What muscles does dance work? Your legs, obviously, bear much of the workload, but your abdominals, too, hold your center and twist your body. It also improves posture and balance.
Like any sport, people can get as much physical exertion out of ballroom dance as they want to. Its vigorousness runs the spectrum from the leisurely stroll of a slow West Coast swing to the heart-racing workouts of the galloping quickstep and jump-intensive jive.
Still, even seemingly slow dance styles can work up a sweat.
“Sometimes the waltz can be the most challenging physically,” Duda said. “If you’re doing a slow waltz, you’re basically doing slow squats. You have to push into that sway. It can really push my heart rate up. Sometimes it’s not the speed of the dance or the type of the dance, it’s how are you generally using your muscles.”
At the beginner level, dancers will probably get a more vigorous workout with Latin dances such as the cha-cha and the rumba or swing dances, said Emily Masters, ballroom instructor for the YCMA of Middle Tennessee’s artEMBRACE program. At more advanced levels, dancers start really honing technique, which can make any dance style a workout. “The glutes, legs, abdominals are worked a lot with Latin dances,” she said. “Then the shoulders and upper arms. Because they’re ‘dancing in the frame’ together, both dancers have to hold this position, which is the equivalent of holding your arms out for a really long time.” She likens the benefits of dancing two or three evenings a week to the equivalent of what you’d get from going to the gym just as often.
Swing your partner
As an added bonus, said 32-year-old Masters, ballroom dance is something you can do with your spouse or significant other. Plus, you can dance when you’re pregnant because it can be a low-impact activity. Masters is four months pregnant with her second child and danced and taught through the duration of her last pregnancy.
“We have people who have lifted weights and done that type of workout for many years and come in, start dancing, and their legs are like Jell-O because they don’t realize what they’re going to get,” said Tina Carlton, president of the Nashville Dance Club, which has nearly 90 members. “When you do ballroom, you’re moving. You’re working your lungs, you’re working your legs.”
More than just for the health benefits, dancers like to shimmy because it’s a social sport, said 61-year-old Carlton of Hendersonville. Like many dancers, it makes her feel good, knowing she’s gotten to see friends while she’s gotten her exercise for the day.
“To me, it’s just the perfect workout,” said National Dance Club’s Duda. “It’s physical, spiritual, social and emotional.”
