Zumba for the New Year!

        2013 is knocking on the door, and one of the all-time top new year’s resolutions is to get in shape. For six years I’ve been shaking it and sweating in Zumba^R  classes. If you’ve decided to Zumba yourself into shape, I’ve got some pointers for you.

       Even though Zumba was invented by a man, Beto Perez, most of the people in my Zumba class are
women, so my advice is more female oriented.

        Before you go to class, get two good pairs of shoes. 

Nike Musique IV shoes with pivot point.

Nike makes Musique dance/cheer shoes that have a pivot point under the ball of the foot. Cross training shoes are also good. I’ve found that heel support is not as important as a shoe that can flex, because I dance more up on the balls of my feet than on my heels. Running shoes can trip you up when you move side to side. You can use them, but beware. Two pairs of shoes allow you to alternate them so they won't wear out as fast.

Absorbent socks are a good thing. When I get home from Zumba, I put my shoes in front of a heating vent to help them dry out.

After you’re done shoe shopping, pick up a few good, supportive, sports bras. Be prepared. A whole lotta shakin’ and shimmying goes on in class. You can wear anything over the sports bra, a tight tank top, a loose t-shirt, or whatever you’re most comfortable in. If you get too hot, and you're daring enough, you can go with just the sports bra.

I usually pull my hair up in a pony tail to keep it out of my face. Others use head bands, or have the foresight and time to braid their hair. Some have short hair and don’t need to do a thing.

As for what to wear on your lower half, in my class, there’s a lot of variety: Yoga pants, capris, running shorts, and tennis skirts, depending mostly on the temperature outside. Fabrics made to wick away moisture are the way to go. Keep in mind that dark colors are better at hiding sweat.

Sometimes for fun I’ll wear a belly dance hip scarf over my yoga pants. Keeping the coins jingling on beat is a challenge, and I like to think of it as doing Zumba with weights.

Don't buy too many new workout clothes though because it probably won't be long before you have to buy more in smaller sizes. Zumba melts the fat off quickly.

Finally, before you leave home, fill up a water bottle. You’ll need at least 20 ounces to stay hydrated during an hour of 600-800 calorie burning Zumba. Some people like ice in their water. I prefer mine room temperature. Smart Water with electrolytes is another option. If I’m doing a 90-minute class, I’ll bring either two 20 oz. water bottles, two bottles of G-Series Performance Gatorade, or a combination of both.

Now that you’re ready, on to class. Get there before class to meet the teacher, and fill out any forms. Trust me, everybody’s nervous before their first Zumba class. Will you know the steps? No. Will you make mistakes? Yes. Will everybody be watching you? No, unless you make the mistake of standing in the front row.

Don’t stand in the front row until you’ve been doing Zumba for awhile and know most of the routines. If you stand in the back, staggered between the two people in front of you, you will be able to watch everybody in front of you and follow them even if you can’t see the teacher. The gals in the front row usually know what they’re doing, and when they started, they started in the back. It won’t take long before you too will know the difference between a cha cha and salsa, hip hop and belly dancing. Then the new people will be pushing you up to the front row.

My Halloween Zumba class.

Put your water bottle, somewhere nearby, but not where anyone can trip on it. You can grab a drink between songs. Introduce yourself to the people around you because sooner or later, you’ll be turning the wrong way and running into them, so you may as well get to know them before hand. They were all beginners before, so they know how you feel. A quick smile and the ability to laugh at yourself go a long way toward making class fun.

One of the great things about Zumba is that you don’t have time to over analyze what you’re doing or fret over any mistakes you make. If everybody is moving left, you better be too, even if your footwork isn’t perfect. Keep moving with the school of fish. Don’t stop dead or you’ll get run over. The music dictates how fast you better be moving.

Sometimes you can divide how fast you move your feet in half if you need to, but you’ve still got to pay attention to the beat. If you can’t find the beat, find someone else’s feet to watch, or if there’s a cowbell clanging, follow it. When I get lost, I focus on correcting my feet first, arms second. You can adjust your movements to be high energy, or low impact. When you’re just starting out, don’t go too big or it’s hard to recover and get back to where you should be. As with anything, the more you practice, they better you'll get, so keep showing up for class if you want to improve.

Ready for a Zumba flash mob.

With thousands of Zumba miles on my many pairs of dancing shoes, the thing that keeps me going back for more, is that I don’t think of it as grueling exercise that I have to endure. It’s an energy filled dance party that I get to go to five or more times a week. There are new songs and routines to figure out each week. My teachers also rotate and keep things fresh. Each one has her own style or “flava.”

Before every class, before the music takes over, my Zumba Maniacs teachers call out to us, “Bend your knees! Pick up your feet! Have fun!” That’s not hard to do at all!

Laura Keolanui Stark will Zumba-on through 2013. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

Christmas Greetings from the Pacific Northwest!

           It started simply enough 24 years ago. Look-wise, John and I are opposites, negatives of each other. He’s blond and blue-eyed. I’m black-haired and brown-eyed. Before we had children, our friends wondered what our kids would look like. We were a real-life genetics “experiment.” Would my dark features be dominant or would a few of my recessive genes line up with John’s?

         When Johnny was born, I thought a photo Christmas card would answer everybody’s question. Three years later, Sarah joined our family and the Christmas picture confirmed the blended genetic traits. Both kids have brown hair and brown eyes. Johnny’s are darker brown than Sarah’s and she is fairer than he is.

That’s how the Christmas picture became our family tradition, and continued annually as a way for distant family and friends to watch the kids grow.

It was the “dark ages” when the tradition began--no digital photos, no email. Somehow the picture would get snapped, and I’d take the roll of 35mm film to the drugstore to be developed. That took a week.

Then I’d pick out the best picture and return to the drugstore with the negative, choose a Christmas card format for it to be printed on, and turn it all in. That would take at least another week.

         One year, when Johnny was three, the film developer used the wrong frame on the negative to create the now family famous poopy face Christmas photo. There wasn’t enough time or money in our budget to get them re-done, so that’s what got mailed out.

Some years I’d remember to take a good family photo when we were on vacation. Then all I had to do was find it in early December. These were the pictures taken by any nameless fellow tourist who was close by. That’s how we got the picture at Stonehenge.

Some were taken by plunking the camera on a nearby steady surface, setting the timer feature, and watching John run back to get in the picture. That’s how we got the picture of us when we sneaked into Tiger Stadium at LSU. Those were the easy years.

The rougher years have been the ones that I tried to plan. I start thinking of locations in November. Sometimes inspiration comes easy. Other times I draw a blank. Then I make suggestions to the family and we go through the “Ewww!!! You’ve got to be kidding. Why would we go there? No way!” process.  Nobody in the history of this family has ever NOT had a strong opinion. (Don’t know whose genes those traits came from. Wink!)

After most of my suggestions have been vetoed, and I’ve said the magic words, “OK, then we’re just not taking a Christmas picture this year. I’ll go to Target and buy some Christmas cards to send out,” people get a little more cooperative.

I started framing the pictures in 1990 and I hang them in the dining room for the holidays.  Looking at the 23-year holiday timeline of our family, I can’t help but remember what went on behind the smiles. We’ve wrangled pets in front of the camera, and gotten the most candid kid smiles over various goofy pet poses. We tried twice to get a picture with Mt. Rainier in the background and failed. It was there when we looked through the camera, but disappeared in the photo.

When the kids left for college, I figured that was it for the Christmas picture, but digital technology and 1-hour Christmas cards saved the tradition. Johnny and Sarah emailed their snowy WSU picture to me. I emailed it to Costco along with a picture of John and me in Beijing, China, and presto, that was the 2009 Christmas picture.

This year, I decided amid the usual moans and groans, that the picture should be taken in Seattle, with the Space Needle in the background. Nothing else says Seattle like the Space Needle! I’d always wanted to “do” this particular picture, I just hadn’t figured out how to make it happen.

The kids are all grown up now, Sarah graduates this spring, and who knows where they’ll end up. This could be our last chance to get the Space Needle shot.

It wouldn’t be easy. If our lives were a Venn diagram, the time that our four lives (five counting our photographer Sarah K.) intersected this past weekend was the tiniest sliver. Work schedules, college break schedules, a mere 8 hours of daylight, holiday traffic, MapQuest and dying I-Phones all conspired against us.

Saturday at 4:00, as the sun disappeared and the rain came down, we were stuck on the Seneca Street off ramp kissing our Christmas picture goodbye. In an act of sheer desperation, I announced, “Well, let’s just get out of the car and take a picture of us with the traffic and big green I-5 signs in the background.”

Luckily, calmer albeit more disgusted, minds prevailed. After a lot of getting lost, turning around, near miss accidents, and strong language, we pulled up at Kerry Park on Queen Anne Hill and exhaled. We all understood immediately why this was touted as the best view of the Seattle skyline and the Space Needle.

It also became clear that if the night vision feature on our camera worked this would be a fantastic picture. The rain and the dark of night worked in our favor. The Space Needle topped with a Christmas tree was all lit up and glowing through the darkness. Nobody, other than a carload of Chinese tourists, was crazy enough to be out in Kerry Park enduring the weather with us.

         We smiled through the cold, wind whipping rain into our faces, trying to look like we weren’t freezing. The city lights, like sprinkles on sugar cookies, sparkled in the rain. And what would a picture of Seattle be without a few raindrops?

Laura Keolanui Stark is calmer now that she can add the 24^th Stark family Christmas picture to the timeline. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.