Common Zumba Injuries and How to Avoid Them

The Latin Upgrade to Jazzercise Doesn't Have to Be Hazardous

"Ditch the workout, join the party," the Zumba Fitness Program tells us.

Zumba is the accidental creation of Alberto "Beto" Perez, an aerobics instructor in Cali, Colombia. One day in the early 1990's, the story goes, Mr. Perez dashed out the door to go to teach his aerobics class without taking his recorded dance music. When Perez arrived at the gym without his usual music, he reached into his backpack for tapes of salsa and merengue music he enjoyed at home.

The class was electrified by the Latin music, Perez often tells instructors. Instead of the class using the music to keep up with the pace of their exercise routine, the music "used the class" to inspire a dance routine that was even more energizing. Smiles broke out all around the room, and Perez realized that he had just conducted his first Zumba Fitness Party.

In 2001, Perez emigrated from Colombia to the United States. In Miami, he teamed up with Alberto Aghion and Alberto Perlman (whose mother had been in the class) to create a business and to trademark the Zumba name. They created a DVD, and an infomercial, and over the last 10 years have established an exercise method used at over 110,000 locations in 125 countries.

There are Zumba video games for Xbox, wii, and PS3. Perez and his collaborators created Aqua Zumba for people who have joint issues, Zumba Gold for beginners and for seniors, Zumba Toning for body toning, Zumba on the Circuit for circuit training, and Zumbatomic for children. Zumba programs incorporate axé music, belly dancing, bhangra, chachacha, flamenco, hip hop, mambo, merengue regaaeton, samba, soca, and tango dance moves.

Does Zumba Really Work?

The Zumba website advertises that a typical workout for adults burns 500 to 1,000 calories. The Zumba Calorie counter computes that a person who weighs 100 kilos (220 pounds) doing a fast routine for 60 minutes, for example, would burn 893 calories. But there is a lot of evidence from many sources other than Zumba that dance routines benefit health in multiple ways:

• Researchers at Chiang Mai University in Thailand tracked the progress of 24 sedentary women who took an aerobic dance class for six weeks. They found that levels of macrophage migration factor, a factor in inflammation swelling belly fat, plummeted during six weeks of regular dance sessions. They also found that overall immune resistance increased.
• Researchers at Brigham Young University measured the energy expenditures of children's exercise games. They found that Dance Dance burned more calories than walking outdoors than playing Nintendo wii (Boxing).
• Researchers at the University of Granada in Spain found that a dance routine called Biodanza relieved the pain of fibromyalgia in women who did the routine once a week for 3 months.
• Researchers at the University of Bochrum in Germany found that seniors aged 65 to 84 who did recreational dancing were less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease.

Dance programs like Zumba have many more benefits than just burning calories and losing weight. But what about injuries?

Three Simple Steps to Preventing Zumba Injuries

Zumba is often described as fast and frenzied. It's not for everyone.

If you have a cardiovascular condition, if you are pregnant, if you have lung disease or diabetes or some other metabolic condition, you probably should not do the traditional Zumba, although Zumba Gold might be fine—check with your doctor first.

However, if you are otherwise in good health, here are the three simple steps to preventing the pulled hamstrings, sprained ankles, and lower back pain that can occur among beginners to the Zumba approach to health and fitness.

1. Choose the right shoes

Zumba does not require any fancy equipment, but health regulations will require you to wear shoes. Don't wear running shoes.

Running shoes have tread on their soles to make forward motion easier. Since Zumba involves quick movements backwards and to the left and right, the tread on running shoes makes injuries more likely. It is better to wear thin-soled sneakers or comfortable gym shoes, just not running shoes.

2. Choose a small class conducted in a spacious classroom

It is important for you to be able to see your Zumba instructor and for your Zumba instructor to be able to see you. If there are, for instance, 100 people in your class, your instructor will not be able to tell you how to make moves properly for maximum muscle strength and minimum risk of injury. An optimal class size is limited to about 25 participants if there is one instructor teaching and one instructor walking around to give individualized help, or about 10 participants if there is just one instructor. It is also important that your classroom is large enough to permit every participant to dance without colliding with other learners.

3. Warm up before you start up

Zumba usually starts fast and ends fast. If your instructor doesn't guide your class in how to do stretches for your abdomen, calves, and hamstrings, you must do these on your own before the class begins.

There is some debate over whether athletes really need to do stretches before working out. The American College of Sports Medicine and the European College of Sport Sciences go so far as to state that stretching before an athletic competition may even lower performance of well-trained athletes.

Most people doing Zumba, however, are not well-trained athletes. Many people doing the exercise routine haven't been doing any other exercise at all.

Ask your instructor to show you how to do stretches—and if they can't tell you, you need a different Zumba instructor! At the very least, simply move in place to step to the side to learn complicated dance steps, participating in the spirit of Zumba before plunging into a dance routine. When you can dance the steps with confidence, you'll burn more calories and build more muscle without risk of injuries that will put you on the sidelines.