Dance workouts: sweat as you laugh at home
Tired of doing the same exercise routine whilst you’re stuck at home during these social-distancing times? Online dance workouts might be the switch up to your routine that you’ve been waiting for.
Dance workouts are a form of dance fitness in which technique and intricate choreography aren’t the focus. Instead, they tend to have a focus on cardiovascular exercise. Instructors, in this case from your screen, show and perform with you an easy-to-follow choreography that keeps you moving in an effort to raise your heart rate.
They can be, and are for lots of people, the most fun way to exercise. In fact, the ample flow of mood-improving chemicals – like dopamine – that dancing releases can improve your mental state. To be straightforward: dancing can make you happier and lessen your risk of depression. It’s a much more effective way to brighten up your mood than just doing intense exercise or listening to motivating music. This is because, with dance workouts, you’re actually doing both at the same time. You’re dancing to some neat tunes and having fun whilst improving your physical wellbeing and mental state.
They’re also incredibly good for your health. A study in Circulation: Heart Failure found that individuals with cardiac conditions who danced three times a week for a mere 20 minutes saw their heart health improve significantly more than those who only performed traditional cardio routines instead of dance workouts. Dancing also makes your skeleton stronger, strengthening your body as you burn some extra calories, and get fitter.
Those who regularly take part in dance workouts can keep their minds sharper in the short term and are less likely to succumb to brain diseases in the long run. According to a New England Journal of Medicine study of 11 physical activities, it found that dancing was the only one that lowered dementia risk by a shocking 76 percent. This is due to the way dancing gives your noggin’s memory, coordination, and focus areas an effective workout, leading to stronger synapses and beefed-up gray matter over time. Your brain rewards you for having fun, what more can I say?
Another one of the greatest things about dance workouts is that they’re accessible to almost all fitness levels. There’s no need for you to move like a professional hip-hopper or ballerina, you just have to follow the moves, listen to the music, and let go. Not only this, but they’re easy to perform at home since they require no equipment and they are available at any time you might wish to exercise. You only need an internet connection, fitness clothing, and some kind of open space. Especially now, with the pandemic, lots of us prefer to do our workouts at home instead of the gyms to avoid taking additional risks. Dancing at home can be the way to go.
Thanks to dance workouts, we can stay home and have fun whilst exercising. So let me list for you the best youtube channels to get your dancing on for free. Here go the top 5 YouTubers that put on killer dance workouts for us all.
- Teagan Dixon – Power moves with a music style for everyone
A professional dancer and fitness enthusiasm, Teagan makes dance workouts that have amazing choreography and will get your heart rate up. She has videos with the tunes of all kinds of musicians, including Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, One Direction, and a fantastic pop-punk dance routine. Yes, you’ve heard it, now you can get fitter whilst singing to the lyrics of Sum 41’s In Too Deep. Disney workouts are also included, and they’re a dream. Lasting around 7 to 15 minutes, her dance videos encompass a handful of fun and a strong punch of bodyweight exercises. She also makes a variety of dancer inspired HIIT workouts, which are definitely the most enjoyable way to tackle a high intensity workout session. Whatever you do, be sure to check her channel out.
- Madfit – Perfect for apartment dwellers
Maddie Lymburner of MadFit creates at-home dance workouts designed for people of all fitness levels and ready to be performed in smaller spaces. The routines are all 15 minutes and have some of the biggest pop hits as their soundtrack. With her dance background, Maddie will inspire you to keep going while at the same time keep you wondering how on earth she can pull it off so flawlessly. She calls them “dance parties”, and that’s a well-deserved name. Her moves are quick, intense, and a ton of fun to follow along with. Think 90’s hits or TikTok dance parties: sweating never sounded so tempting. Oh, and she too has a ton of shorter, one-song workouts. Perfect if you’re in a rush.
- EMKFIT – Tabata style sweatiness
Emily Thorne’s signature phrases are “Fake it til you Make i” and “Wrong and Strong. These two sayings sum up her dance workouts quite perfectly. They’re Tabata-style HIIT-hop routines, a combination of hip-hop dance moves and high intensity interval training exercises. She makes HIIT fun by taking out the planks and burpees and adding some really dorky and fun dance moves, making you sweat for 20 to 30 minutes as you sing your lungs out. I don’t know about you, but they’re very few workouts that sound more appealing to me than a High School Musical dance HIIT routine. Maybe her Mamma Mia one… Or the 20 minutes Shrek HIIT… The point is you should definitely give it a go.
- Pamela Reif – Focused and intense
Pamela Reif is well known for her killer ab workouts and unforgiving booty routines, but the German trainer also has some neat and beginner-friendly dance moves to show off. Lasting 10 to 15 minutes, her dance videos showcase the usual training style of her routines whilst keeping fun and dancey. The focus is on music genres or decades, and they’re guaranteed to help you break a sweat and feel your muscles start to burn. Her “15 minutes happy dance workout” is my personal favourite, the last song being a killer HIIT routine and all. And in case you’re feeling bold enough to dive into the rest of her vast variety of workout videos, she posts weekly plans that are fit for all levels of fitness expertise.
- Kyra Pro – Everything themed fun
Kyra Provost’s dance workouts never fail to be packed full of easy moves to follow along, giving you a full-body workout with upper body exercises, side-lunges, and butt-toning squats to boot. The pace is perfect to get your heart rate racing just enough whilst allowing you to perform the more functional-style exercises without difficulty. Some of her greatest themes are Grease, Hamilton, Disney Halloween, and The Greatest Showman. Still, there are so many more that I’m missing to mention here. With such variety, it’s trickier to get bored of working out at home.
