Dance your way to fitness with our Jazzercise keep-fit, weight-loss workout

If you're still stuck in lockdown, like much of the world, you probably haven't been out dancing in quite a while. But we've brought the dancing to you: you don't even have to get dressed up. Just throw on some of the best workout clothes for men or the best workout clothes for women and you're good to go.  

This workout, designed by Jazzercise's Lucy Bolding, is a great way to work out and have fun at the same time. A study in the journal Frontiers in Science News, published by scientists from Humboldt University Berlin, found people who loved their workouts were more likely to participate in them. Injecting your exercise sessions with a bit of fun, especially during the monotony of quarantine, will get you working out even more. 

“This could be a starting point to change the focus of sport programs to finding what people love doing, with less focus on technical data like counting calories,” says lead author Benjamin Wienke. “These four factors [perceived competence, perceived social interaction, novel experiences, and physical exertion] could help increase adherence, and people would enjoy their programs more and achieve their goals better.”

Dancing (especially with a group of friends, if you can manage it depending on local restrictions) fills all four of these pillars comfortably, making for a fun, energetic workout you'll want to come back to over and over again.

Why do the Jazzercise workout?

Lucy's jazzercise workout incorporates bodyweight squats, kicks, punches and classic aerobic cardio moves, all to lively music. One study, published in the International Journal of Physiology, found exercising with music ups the participants' endurance levels. If you don't often work for a full 30 minutes when you exercise, this might be the workout to improve your endurance and hit that 30-minute mark. 

In addition to some comfortable workout clothes, you also need a pair of the best adjustable dumbbells to complete this workout. In addition to the squats toning your lower body, the dumbbells help work your core and upper body, ensuring this routine offers a total-body workout. If you don't have very much time to train, this a great solution, taking just half an hour to hit every major muscle group.

You might be wondering why we're focusing on building muscle when we called this a "weight loss workout", but the two are very closely related. The UK's National Health Service reports "muscle cells require more energy to maintain than fat cells, so people with more muscle than fat tend to have a faster metabolism". 

If you build a little bit of muscle in addition to performing cardiovascular workouts, it will increase your metabolism to burn more calories in the long term. Pipe some funky jazzercise tracks through some of our best workout earbuds, grab your dumbbells, and you're ready to feel the burn!