By Julie Mee
Local residents have found a new way to stay active Friday nights with one of the latest fitness crazes — hip hop aerobics — at the YMCA on Argyle Street.
“It’s a fun way to exercise,” says YMCA group fitness supervisor Natalie Rivier. “You’re dancing, you’re having fun. You don’t even realize you’re working out.”
Dominique Doucet-Desjar-dins, 15, who enrolled in the class with her mother Danielle, agress.
“I think this class is amazing. It’s high-energy. It’s really demanding, and that’s what I like,” says Doucet-Desjardins.
The loud, pumping hip hop music that plays during the class creates the high-energy atmosphere and entices onlookers to pop their heads into the YMCA gymnasium, where the class is taught, to see what the fuss is all about.
Newcomers can join the classes, which run for eight weeks, and cost an added fee of $28, above a YMCA membership. The first class began on Sept. 29 and about 20 hip hop enthusiasts enrolled.
Kathy Godding, who works with Rivier, says the YMCA offers the class because they try to “keep up with new trends.”
“We try and cater to every level of fitness and age group,” she says.
Danielle Doucet, 42, is just one of many who are enjoying this new trend. Doucet says she used to go out dancing at night, but now the clubs are full of young people, so she comes to the class instead.
“It’s my dancing night out,” she says. “It’s great. I struggle, but I think I keep up pretty good.”
Nadia Robichaud, the hip hop class instructor, guides the class through simple hip hop steps that she works into a sequence.
As the pace quickens some members of the class get a little lost because, as Doucet explains, it’s more of a combined mental and physical workout than traditional aerobics.
“There’s a lot more choreography, so you have to concentrate,” Doucet says.
But Robichaud says most people should be able to keep up.
“The class is more dance then cardio. The (beats per minute) typically stays under 100,” the 29-year-old says.
Robichaud, who teaches similar classes at several studios in the Ottawa-area, learned about the dance form by participating in dance workshops in San Francisco.
Robichaud competed in aerobics contests when she was younger. She is also a certified personal trainer and worked on the Cardio Hip Hop television show on Rogers Cable 23 before starting classes of her own.
Robichaud says her first class started with seven people, but now the classes are typically full. People really enjoy hip hop classes, Robichaud says.
“It’s really popular right now. When people go to clubs, (hip hop’s) what they hear. Those shows on (television), like Making the Band, and now Popstars, and music videos, a big part of them is dance.”
She couldn’t be sure that hip hop is a trend that has the staying power of other aerobic styles, such as step classes, but Robichaud is sure she will “always be doing dance.”
Both Danielle Doucet and her daughter are planning to take the class again.
“It’s going to be an on-going thing, I think,” she says.
Doucet and others wishing to join the fun and make hip hop aerobics a regular part of their fitness schedule can look for classes every Friday night.