Zumba, in which the front cross footwork is just faster and a little more salsa.

Last year, as part of my champion program, I found fitness in a weekly class with the trainer of rock hard cores and by trudging to the church down the street to boogie to the oldies, or something shivery creepy like that, in the auditorium/basketball court/feed the homeless room with a bunch of slow moving older ladies with weird hair and pastel colored track suits.

What started happening though, the jazzercise, it was sucking my soul dry. Bad. Jazzercise has all the character of limp flooring material. The volume was weak, the dance moves excruciatingly, mind numbingly boring, and the music was indescribable. It makes me weep to think about it. There were jazz hands to country versions of Frank Sinatra songs and ball changes over and over and over again where we were supposed to sing along with J-Lo. And go WOOO!

I am so not a WOOOer.

While jazzercise was exercise, VERY cheap, and half a block from my house, it also started to corrode my brain until I couldn't go anymore. I just couldn't. I am still shaking off the corrosion. Now any time I hear a Britney Spears remix through a warbly voice distorter, tiny metallic flakes come sifting out my nose.

I liked my personal trainer class with my friends, but it grew a little repetitive and a lot expensive. The days grew short and dark and the spare tire around my gut grew over the nice cores that had been living in there.

So guess what we found instead?

Zumba.

Total upgrade from Jazzercise. What was I thinking, doing the sashay across the church auditorium all those months? This is more like being in normal dance class again, how I used to spend a lot of hours, back in the day. When those days had better knees and a presentable belly button. Salsa versions of Snoop Dogg songs. Loads of bass. Much shimmy shimmy hip grind. Fast little merengue steps way better for flitting through euro course footwork and rebuilding the cores again at the same time.

And way more fun. My people are in there, all kinds of people go to zumba. And it's pretty cheap. And close to my house. Not jazzercise close and cheap, but not too bad. In a gym, so I can go to yoga and get all healthy and cardio if I apply myself. Which champions are supposed to do.

The dogs might have to stay at home during zumba, but I think they will like a happier, zumbafied person much better.