What Ever Happened to Zumba?

As I prepare to graduate from college in three months, there has been one big obvious question on my mind: where am I going to take a Zumba class now?

Before you wonder why I’m not signing up for pilates, let me explain. I grew up doing gymnastics on a performance team, and therefore never had to think about “working out.” I was the most active of my friend group and was generally the person you’d ask to open a stuck jar or help you carry a couch. Once I reached high school and college, I switched my sport of choice to colorguard, where I get to run around the football field while spinning a flag. All of these extracurriculars meant that going to the gym essentially never crossed my mind.

While I was at my gymnastics or yoga classes, my mom would be down the hall at the YMCA doing Zumba: the biggest fitness craze of the 2000s. She would dance, pop, and lock to Britney Spears, Pitbull, and what I swear was every big Latin artist at the time. My mom always used to come home from her Zumba classes and excitedly show my dad and I the newest combo she had learned, while I stood behind her and tried to copy the moves. She told us how her classes were so much more fun than running or weight lifting, and I took that to heart. I even got to join in on a few of her classes as I got older.

As my last ever season of colorguard comes to a close and graduation grows ever nearer, I fear the state of my health and well-being. While I signed up for a hip hop class here at UD to keep myself moving until the end of spring, the summer seems to hold many 40 hour weeks of sitting, and not a whole lot of dancing. I’ve been applying to a multitude of jobs, all of which require the same long hours of sitting at a desk all day. I thought a great way to stay active after a long day of work would be to go to a regular fitness class. But this brings me back to our original question:

What ever happened to Zumba?

My endless complaints

As I’ve scrolled through endless pages of Google search results for “zumba,” “dance workout classes,” and “fun fitness” near me, there are no Zumba classes nearby where I’ll soon be living. At first, I thought of trying a different kind of workout– I know people are huge on pilates right now, and crossfit has always been popular. However, I run into a problem: those are way too hard! I’m looking for a way to stay mobile and not develop premature arthritis. I don’t care about being buff– I just want to dance to fun music.

This brings me to another problem with workout classes in the modern day: our music choices. Zumba peaked in popularity in a time where every song on the radio was about having the best night of your life, not caring about what the haters say, and falling in love with a mysterious stranger at the club. The music that’s popular now is mostly optimized for TikTok, which means ballads and relatable lyrics. Imagine doing a hip hop routine to “I Love You, I’m Sorry” by Gracie Abrams. I think the entire class would be in tears. 

The music at Zumba also helped me connect to my culture. As a Hispanic, there aren’t many times I get to see people from a variety of backgrounds enjoying Latin music. It was great to see all types of people coming together. The music in most online workout videos usually has to be copyright free, so it ends up being loud techno music. Remember Chloe Ting, the girl who everyone watched during COVID-19 lockdown? 

My last complaint about other types of popular group workouts nowadays is that they’re not expressive. Crossfit and pilates don’t let you add your own personal flair to the moves, or else you’ll probably fall over on the machines and injure yourself.

Is there still hope?

Despite my many grievances about the state of working out in the modern day, there have been a few shining lights that have helped me. A TikTok user named Allie Bennett created “treadmill struts,” where she creates a thirty minute to hour long playlist of different genres or artists, like Chappell Roan, 2000s pop music, or emo hits. She then figures out the BPM, or beats per minute, of each song, and determines what speed on the treadmill you need to use in order to walk in time to the beat of the song. This creates the perfect scenario for pretending to walk down the runway, into the club with friends, or on a sunny trail in the woods, depending on what mood you’re in and what playlist you’re listening to. Bennett has been making these for a few years now, which means that there’s a huge variety of genres to choose from. I personally love that she’s around the same age as me, and therefore has similar music taste. This has proven to be a fun workout for me, although I hope there’ll be a day when there’s enough treadmills available next to each other at the gym for me to do it with my friends. 

Another great example of someone trying to bring the Zumba spirit back is Moves with Molly on YouTube. She makes dance workouts, HIIT exercises, and everything in between. She puts the song that the workout is set to in the title and thumbnail of each video, which is great for finding music you actually want to listen to. She has also created playlists for different genres, including but not limited to “Rock & Metal Music,” “Sabrina Carpenter Workouts,” and “2025 Grammy Winners.” I admittedly did almost all of the songs that I liked in one day, so I’m praying she uploads more videos soon.

As someone who was too young to fully participate during the peak of Zumba, I’m begging everyone to bring it back. Reach out to your local YMCA, gym, or community center and ask the same question we began with: what ever happened to Zumba?

Written by June Reyes