INTERVIEW Wellbeing
INTERVIEW WITH JOANNE BUSHNELL Zumba is a Latin inspired dance fitness programme created by a dancer and choreographer Alberto Perez from Colombia during the 1990’s. It involves various dance and aerobic elements that include hip-hop, samba, salsa merengue and mambo, to name a few!! In the 1990’s, Alberto Perez had forgotten to take his music to the class he was teaching and decided to use the tapes from his car! The tapes consisted traditional Latin salsa and merengue music, so he improvised! The class went very well and Zumba was born! I caught up with a Zumba instructor, Joanne Bushnell to ask her a few questions… Hi Joanne, what got you interested in Zumba? I was already a fitness instructor and I taught aerobics, legs, bums and tums and I teach aqua as well and I work up at Virgin Active and there was a lady who had done a course and I saw her doing a demonstration downstairs on the gym floor and it just looked really interesting, so I researched it and found that Zumba seemed to be the way forward, so I booked myself onto the course. Why do you think Zumba has captured the public’s imagination so much? Because it’s fun and as they say, ditch the workout and join the party!! The music is motivating and a lot of people come out smiling!! I love teaching aerobics, but this is so different and each track has different routines so it doesn’t get boring. I make up the routines myself. I
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don’t always use the Zumba music, I look through iTunes and when I hear a track I like, like for example, Rock Party Anthems, as long as you use the Zumba rhythm and you stick to that, then that’s fine and you can use the music you like. As a form of exercise, is Zumba any better than say Step or Aerobics? Personally I think it is because it’s what they call intermittent training, so you’ve got times when you have a lot of cardio going on, then we will stand and do stationary moves and lots of hip circles for your waist , so your metabolism fluctuates , so it’s very good at burning calories. How many classes do you teach a week? I do 18 classes a week, that’s Zumba plus water aerobics as well. My family keep telling me that I over exercise, but it’s work and I enjoy it and that’s why I like to keep it all fresh and keep updating songs because you can get bored of it yourself. I just love it!! Zumba is predominantly for women, do you agree and why do you think that is? No I don’t think so, I think men are a bit
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