29 classes in 30 days: We challenged ourselves to cardio dance for a month
At the beginning of April, we took on the challenge to stick to one workout for an entire month to see how it may change our fitness and perspective.
We chose DanceBody -- a studio based in New York City that specializes in dance-based cardio and toning classes.
DanceBody, as you would guess, is a fully dance-based workout. DanceBody’s founder, Katia Pryce, offers a few different classes for different levels: Follow Along for beginners, Signature, Sculpt focused on toning, and Level Above for advanced dancers.
We mostly stuck to Signature and Sculpt.
In Signature, you learn a set of dances that stay the same for three months with the same playlist.
At first, it was intimidating. (To up the ante, the first time we tried the dances we had a camera crew filming -- but you can even try it in the privacy of your living room through their DanceBody at-home streaming service.)
After a week or so, we caught on and our muscle memory started to kick in.
We liked the Signature class because it relies more on choreography instead of an 80’s-style aerobic workout.
Katia does throw in some “pop-ups,” which are actually just burpees to a beat. There are about 10 in one of the songs, but who’s counting?
By accident once, we tried the class level above, "Full-Out," which is based off the signature class choreography but ups the ante adding more difficult, faster moves.
The workout
We decided to stick to the Signature classes for this first month -- where we became super comfortable and even started to look forward to each day of dances.
Sculpt consists of lots of leg lift series, abdomen and arm work -- and everything in between. Think light weights, resistance bands and ankle weights. It hurts. We started to see changes from these sculpt workouts within days. Everything just felt a little bit tighter!
By week two, we were tired and our muscles were sore. The cardio class kept us moving for 60 minutes straight and the sculpt sections really focused on tiny “sculpting” muscles that we would use in most workouts.
29 classes in 30 days
We went all in on this challenge, taking classes five to six days a week.
In total, we completed 29 classes in 30 days.
By the end of the month, we looked forward to the dances and felt super confident in class.
I mean, who doesn’t love dancing to Britney Spears with your BFF … and count it as a workout!
ABC News' Elisa Tang and Faith Bernstein produced and contributed to this report.
