Word: workouts
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Even fitness guru Kathy Smith has set aside her free weights to undulate in a new DVD, Flex Appeal: A Belly Dance Workout. Says Smith: "My hope was to bring belly dancing to a person who would be too intimidated to take a class. I saw there was a need for something a little different for the mainstream audience...
Just how good a workout is belly dance? That, of course, depends on how you do it--and how often. But practitioners say the precise, rolling movements of belly dance combine aerobic exercise with stretching and strengthening. "Everybody learning the muscle-isolation exercises says they discovered muscles they never knew they had, because we don't just work the main muscle groups--we're engaging all the supporting ones," says Rania Androniki Bossonis, a Long Beach, Calif., instructor who, in keeping with the trend, has created a DVD series called Bellydance Fitness for Weight Loss...
...bored by her old six-day-a-week weight-training routine at the gym. After 21/2 years of belly dance, she says, "I'm lean in different places, like my abdominals, hips and inner thighs." Best of all, "you don't even realize you're following a workout regimen because you're so caught up in the music and movement." Silva says she has no desire to set foot in a gym ever again...
...belly dance may have an even bigger appeal for women who are not die-hard workout aficionadas. It's one of the few dance or exercise disciplines in which a few extra pounds around the middle aren't a problem. The traditional belly dancer has ample hips and a voluptuous shape, and many students like the fact that the teachers, while fit, look more womanly than the typical hard-body fitness instructor. "Many fuller-figured women are afraid to go to aerobics classes because they're getting laughed at," says Sohaila, a teacher in San Diego whose real name...
Though tradition has it that certain belly-dance moves evolved from female fertility rituals, the workout version has even begun to attract some men. Tomas Villalobos, a substitute teacher from Escondido, Calif., who suffers from chronic back pain, decided to join his wife's class after noticing that belly dancers had strong, flexible backs. Now a regular, Villalobos says, "Not only has my pain decreased, but my flexibility and muscle strength have increased greatly...