What a great beginning of the year. I hope everyone had a great holiday and rang in the New Year with a bang. For those of you who didn’t know, I am now teaching Zumba once a week. This is such a great opportunity for me. I have so much to learn and teach. Not only am I learning new routines, but I’m learning from the class. I taught my first class this week and had such an amazing time. I had such great support from family, friends and coworkers. I met some wonderful ladies at class and received some great tips that’ll help me improve and become a better instructor. I hope to add more classes to my schedule, but for now, once a week is good.
Some tips that I learned in my first class:
Adjust yourself to the level of your class. If you notice that the participants are struggling, especially with more complicated moves, make the move easier for them to mimic, you can later progress to the more complicated move later in the routine. I know how I feel when I see instructors dancing and moving like they’re out at the club. To me, it just feels like they’re showing off for the class and that’s not what Zumba is about. You want your class to be able to pick up the move and not get frustrated because they have no idea what they’re doing. I noticed on a couple of routines, the class was confused on how to do the moves, so I slowed down the choreography until they were able to pick up the moves.
Cueing is KEY! Yes, we all learned this in Zumba training, but you don’t realize how important it is until you’re teaching a class. Learning a routine isn’t the only part of teaching, you really need to know how and when to cue. So when I’m learning my routines, I’m also add in cues during the routine. I had a request from a participant who wanted me to do verbal cues. I didn’t grant her request, only because it would have confused me and everyone in class. Since I’m facing the class when I teach it’s hard for me to tell them to move left when I really mean for them to move right.
Practice, practice, practice. But know that practice DOESN’T always make perfect. I had my routines down, and could even do them in my sleep even. However, I inadvertently had to do some “creative re-work” during a routine. My mind started to wander and I completely blanked and couldn’t remember where I was in the routine. I made up a couple of moves until I could get myself back on track, but it didn’t happen until almost the end of the routine. I just had to brush it off and keep moving. I know that I’m not the first one it happened to and it won’t be the last. I just have to be more cognizant and more aware of what I’m doing. But you know how it is, you start thinking about things you need to do, or make a grocery list, oh yeah, I haven’t eaten yet today, what should I eat for dinner; and then bam, you’re out of sync and can’t remember what move comes next. Don’t be too hard on yourself and remember that the class won’t know that you did it wrong unless you tell them. So just Taylor Swift it and Shake It Off.
Zumba with Elizabeth 