Zumba zooms onto Longboat…Everybody Dance!

Its website boasts, “More people stick to Zumba than any other workout. Why? Because when it’s fun, it doesn’t feel like work.” The site claims 150 million people have taken a Zumba class at 200,000 locations in 180 countries around the world. It seems that Longboat Key was the rare place where Zumba was not.

That is what Brenner Brenner discovered when she relocated here from Washington, D.C. in July. And when she couldn’t find a class, she was in a position to do something about it, because she is more than an enthusiast. She is a Zumba teacher, as well.

If you’re not familiar with Zumba, it is a dance fitness program created by Colombian dancer and choreographer Alberto “Beto” Perez in the 1990s. It features Latin and other international music, “dancey” choreography and routines to specific songs. As with Jazzercise, a workout that consists of several separate songs, one stops and another starts. But Zumba is less about mastering a specific set of steps to specific musical cues and more about moving your body to the music and having fun while you are doing something that’s good for you…a kind of exercise equivalent to whole grain ice cream.

If you are familiar with Zumba, you may well think it is not for anybody over 40. OK, over 30. And if you saw the Zumba classes at my New York City gym, you would be sure of it. They are way too fast, complex and strenuous for most Longboat Key ladies. But what Zumba teaches its teachers is to adapt the routines to their student populations. And that brings us back to Brenner and her background.

Brenner was a gymnast as a kid and her first real job, when she was in high school, was teaching classes at an Elaine Powers Figure Salon in Philadelphia, back when Reebok provided her training as a step aerobics instructor. Her real career, however, was in business, emphasizing marketing and communications. She has an MBA and a resume that includes work for the health nonprofit Society for the Arts in Healthcare, the Billy Casper golf course management company and a shopping center developer-and-philanthropist, for whom she planned and produced shows and events for military audiences. 

There’s an almost incidental connection to fitness in all of those jobs and Brenner was ever a runner and a triathlete but it was 2004 when she actually got into the exercise business. She owned a Curves franchise in D.C. from 2004 to 2007, then sold it and started her own company, Girl Power Fitness. Both operations were geared to women, mostly older, who don’t like to exercise and, in Brenner’s words, “wouldn’t set foot in a traditional gym.”

Along the way, Brenner has earned many different certifications including Physical Mind Institute for Pilates and Aerobics and Fitness Association of America (AFFA) for Group Fitness Instruction. She took her first Zumbas class after her clients started asking her about it in the summer of 2011 and got her license to teach it that August.

What Longboat Key has in Suzy Brenner is a broadly experienced fitness teacher with a lot of experience with our population, giving her the ability to teach this exceptionally popular kind of exercise in a way that is both safe and fun. I took her first class at Bayfront Park Dec. 1, so I am speaking from experience. There was nobody under 65, and there were varying levels of fitness, but everybody got a good workout and everybody had a good time.

The kind of exercise that is “best” for you is whatever kind you like and enjoy doing. For many, Zumba meets and exceeds that criterion. In Brenner’s words, “There’s no magic to exercise; you need to find the one you like. Many people like to dance and when you’re doing that, you often don’t realize that you are exercising.”  Maybe their website is right about why more people stick to Zumba than any other form of exercise.

Now you can find out if you like it without leaving Longboat Key. Brenner’s classes are 45 minutes long. She teaches at the Town’s Bayfront Park Recreation Center at 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays: $10/class for members, $15 for nonmembers. She teaches at 10 a.m. Thursdays at Aging in Paradise Resource Center; suggested donation is $10/class. Tell her the Aerobic Grandma sent you. And have a good time!