Hey there, it's Chloe. And I have a confession: I hate exercising. I always find myself staring at the clock, and realizing how time does actually slow down when I’m not having fun. But, I just discovered a type of exercise that I actually like. Zumba. I am a terrible dancer - you don’t want to be within three feet of my because I might break your arm or something - but when it comes to Zumba I find myself not caring what other people think about my moves. I just go with it. That might be because my Zumba class tends to fill up with women over the age of 40, but still... I thought Zumba would be like water aerobics minus the water, but I was way wrong. The fifteen other 40+ women and I were twerking and shimmying together. Well, attempting to twerk and shimmy. No joke. I wish I could’ve filmed me in this class, because I’m sure I looked absolutely ridiculous. But I had fun, and the hour passed in what felt like 15 minutes.

So if you’re not a fan of working out, but need to in order to be in a good mood you’re not alone. Zumba is something that you should definitely try out!

xox ~chloe

Hi, it's Kim and I'm the opposite of Chloe because I love to exercise! It's the best start of my day and I can't sleep unless I've been active. We decided to try Zumba because we kept hearing so many fun things about it, and Chloe was starting to dread (more than usual) going to work out. But, we had taken a dance class together a while ago, and it was a disaster. We could barely follow the steps and the teacher was intent on embarrassing us. We were ready to try again, so we prepared for the worst, while hoping for the best.

We headed in to Zumba and pegged our teacher as tiny but powerful cross between Sofia Vergara & Shakira. Yikes! This could be baaaad. But, things looked up as we looked around: we didn't fit the demographic, we were 20 - 40 years younger than everyone else. Hallelujah! Class would be slow, and we would be stars! We could definitely dance better than 60-70 year olds, right?

The music started... and I realized how wrong I was. How absolutely, incredibly wrong and age-ist I had been. These women could dance. Not only could they dance, but they. wore. jazz. shoes. They were serious dancers. They Zumba'd and shimmied with abandon and a carefree spirit. Chloe and I were in shock. While we tried to follow the steps the best we could, we weren't 1/2 the women these seniors are. We weren't 1/4 the dancers they are, and they could definitely shimmy better than us. Oh my gawd, this was embarrassing.

But we realized that nobody was shaming us, nobody was laughing, nobody was critiquing. They were calling out "good job" and "you're a fast learner!" We felt encouraged and started to follow their lead... and we actually started to... dance! And guess what? We let loose. Maybe not like the instructor. (Ok, definitely not like her!) Maybe not as well our fellow senior citizens. But we danced better than we had ever danced in a class before.

Zumba class reminded me how far a few words of praise could go. And how strong the bond of sisterhood can be when you start to doubt yourself, even when it's just something silly like a dance class. As we were guzzling our water after Zumba and mopping our faces, the jazz-shoed women sauntered over to ask our names and chit-chat. They welcomed us into their group, and said they hoped we'd be back. They made us feel... well, almost like we could shimmy.

XO ~kim

pants: Strut-This | top: Athleta| shoes: New Balance| pullover: Prana | water bottle: SIGG

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