Zumba
Zumba: the experience of a lifetime!
Over the years people have been worried about their body structure be it man or woman. To keep their body in perfect shape women have opted for dancing while men referred to athletics. People have also entertained swimming as well as yoga to maintain their fitness. Dancing took different forms and evolved with a new genre at different places, similarly men took over to strenuous exercising routines over regular athletics.
This pattern of keeping oneself fit compared to the environment has been in existence since the beginning of civilizations. The same trend continues till today where men go different gyms to work out and build muscles. However, there are those people who do not have time to maintain these routines after regular hard work of the office. They generally revert to aerobics classes. With the rhythmic stretching exercises that they perform a person would easily lose unnecessary fat and keep the body healthy.
Until the early 90s things were very much this way until a revolution occurred through a mistake. Alberto ‘Beto’ Perez, a celebrity trainer, realized upon entering his aerobics classroom that he had forgotten to bring the music track, which he generally uses for training the class. However, he could not leave the class astray so the only way left for him was to use whatever music he had along with him in his car. Even then luck was not on his side, he managed to find collection of sound tracks favorite to him. They were all collection of Latin meringue and salsa music, which did not fit in with the offbeat aerobic training.
It was a challenge for Beto to make the impossible happen. Not only did he accept the challenge but with his improvisation he gave birth to a new fitness program called “Zumba”. He brought luck back on his side with this improvisation and immediately this class of his became immensely popular within the fitness facility. It all occurred in the small country of Colombia in South America in the mid 1990s. It was simply a start then of the great revolution that was to follow in the near future.
Zumba, having been inspired by Latin dance initially, is now one of the most creative forms of fitness programs. The word Zumba is the derivative of the Colombian word, whose meaning is to have fun while move fast. This form of program combines the Latin movements along with the cardiovascular exercise to form an aerobic schedule that is easy to understand and at the same time fun to do.
After this tremendous success in Colombia, in the year 1999, Beto took over his classes to America as in U.S. Here he received an offer from the entrepreneurs named Alberto Aghion and Alberto Perlman. The offer was to establish a worldwide company, which would promote the philosophy of Zumba. Thus the youngsters had fixed their motive to enlighten the world about Zumba.
From then onwards Aghion and Perlman were able to finalize a deal along with a affluent infomercial company for launching the concept nationally. This took place in the year 2002 and resulted in selling numerous videos in the U.S. market alone. All this hype led to the popularity of Zumba and thus the need of a training instructor. Zumba then onwards started a Zumba instructor training program. It was a success instantly and by the month of September of 2006 there were Zumba trainers all over the world.
The idea of developing a fitness campaign separately for Hispanic market resulted in Zumba forming team with Kellogg’s in the year 2003. From that time onwards Kellogg’s has spread this campaign over to 5 different countries and has been improving its relation with Zumba each year. Zumba has been the feature of the Special K cereal across the globe for a long time. In the year to follow the sale of Zumba DVDs spread over 30 countries and had sold over 2.5 million copies. This was because Zumba had launched an infomercial campaign for the Hispanic market of U.S., in Spanish. The idea turned out to be a great success for them in 2004.
Then in 2005 the hunger for Zumba instructors grew so rapidly all over the world that it pushed forth the formation of the Zumba’s Educational Division. To make sure that quality and integrity is assured above all the Zumba’s Educational Division has a combined industry experience of over 50 years. Under their able and experienced guidance Zumba has allied with Can-Fit-Pro (International Trade Show & Conference in Canada), ACE (American Council on Exercise), AFAA (Aerobic & Fitness Association of American), SCW Fitness Education, IDEA (the world’s largest association for fitness professionals), and various other fitness organizations and chains.
At present Zumba offers two main workshops which include the Zumba Basic Skills Instructor Training workshop and the Zumba Gold workshop. The former allows the different candidates to be an instructor themselves and teach the basic classes of Zumba, whereas, the later program is basically for the de-conditioned exerciser and active older-adults. By this 2008 there are plans to launch various other programs across the world.
The music selection has gradually evolved to various categories for sculpting and toning the body. At present the Zumba routines do not include Latin music and dance only instead it varies including merengue, cumbia, salsa, mambo, reggaeton, rumba, salsaton and calypso, also flamenco. Thus if anybody is interested to join the program they may enroll themselves to it and enjoy their moment by pumping up the volume. Till then Zumba would keep spreading over the various fitness centers across the globe.