Getting my Salsa back

I want to state for the record, right here and now, that to the extent I was EVER an athlete of any sort, it was in the area of dance. My high school had a danceline which was, truth be told, something for those of us who failed the cheerleading tryouts.  I didn’t make cheerleader because I couldn’t do the splits. (More about that on some later FitNotesNH post.)  So, back about–God help me–35 years ago, I danced chorus line style with about 10 other girls, putting on performances at football and basketball games. That’s me in the back row, far left. Much later, as an adult, when I first realized that, hey, a body needs to get exercise, aerobic dance was my first choice. (Think Jane Fonda.)  I did it for years, then stopped for years, then took it up again here in Peterborough through the Peterborough Recreation Department and a local Jazzercize franchise.

All that experience failed me when I joined Meredith Stephens and her “Cardio Salsa” class after about three weeks back at the Wellness Center. Meredith danced to the left, I went right. The group sashayed and I two-stepped.  They went forward, I went back.  Clearly, someone had rewired whatever rhythm center I retained in my brain.

Then I realized the problem:  I was watching Meredith in the mirror!  In all my past dance experiences, I’d never had a mirror in front of me. Here in this class,  my lefts and rights were backwards—it was a little bit like learning to use a computer mouse way back when.  In my second attempt at the class, after realizing the error of my ways, I watched Meredith instead of the mirror and I had a blast! My fellow dancers and I were in sync—mostly.

And what a workout. If the experts say you should get 30 minutes of moderate activity five days each week, and I’ve just done 60 minutes of totally fun stuff with Meredith, heck, I’m already two-fifths of the way there!

I could definitely feel everything pumping. We worked up to maximum heart rate slowly, so I was somewhat unaware of how hard I’d been working.  Some things I found out were quite difficult to do—a jumping jack series killed my ankles; swinging my arms quickly overhead hurt my shoulder.  But, I modified and concentrated so hard on getting the steps right that, again, the hour flew by. All the other women—and one courageous man—in the class were forgiving of my flubs and, besides, they were also concentrating so hard on their own steps that they had no time to worry whether I was doing them correctly. I found great comfort in that.

[For the beginning of this tale,  see A metal cube of junk? That's me. ]

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