Tag Archive for: dancing

Top 10 Reasons to get Physical

Regular aerobic activity, such as walking, bicycling or swimming, can help you live longer and healthier. Need motivation? See how aerobic exercise affects your heart, lungs and blood flow. Then get moving and start reaping the rewards.

Ballroom Blitz – Every Monday from 1:30pm to 2:15pm

How your body responds to aerobic exercise

During aerobic activity, you repeatedly move large muscles in your arms, legs and hips. You’ll notice your body’s responses quickly.

You’ll breathe faster and more deeply. This maximises the amount of oxygen in your blood. Your heart will beat faster, which increases blood flow to your muscles and back to your lungs.

Your body will even release endorphins, natural painkillers that promote an increased sense of well-being.

Your small blood vessels (capillaries) will widen to deliver more oxygen to your muscles and carry away waste products, such as carbon dioxide and lactic acid.

Ballroom Dancing – Every Wednesday from 10:30 – 12:00

What aerobic exercise does for your health

Regardless of age, weight or athletic ability, aerobic activity is good for you. Aerobic activity has many health benefits, no matter your age. As your body adapts to regular aerobic exercise, you’ll get stronger and fitter.

Consider the following 10 ways that aerobic activity can help you feel better and enjoy life to the fullest.

Aerobic activity can help you:

  1. Keep excess pounds at bay
    Combined with a healthy diet, aerobic exercise helps you lose weight and keep it off.
  2. Increase your stamina, fitness and strength
    You may feel tired when you first start regular aerobic exercise. But over the long term, you’ll enjoy increased stamina and reduced fatigue.You can also gain increased heart and lung fitness and bone and muscle strength over time.
  3. Ward off viral illnesses
    Aerobic exercise activates your immune system in a good way. This may leave you less susceptible to minor viral illnesses, such as colds and flu.
  4. Reduce your health risks
    Aerobic exercise reduces the risk of many conditions, including obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, stroke and certain types of cancer.Weight-bearing aerobic exercises, such as walking, help decrease the risk of osteoporosis.
  5. Manage chronic conditions
    Aerobic exercise may help lower blood pressure and control blood sugar. It can reduce pain and improve function in people with arthritis. It can also improve the quality of life and fitness in people who’ve had cancer. If you have coronary artery disease, aerobic exercise may help you manage your condition.
  6. Strengthen your heart
    A stronger heart doesn’t need to beat as fast. A stronger heart also pumps blood more efficiently, which improves blood flow to all parts of your body.
  7. Keep your arteries clear
    Aerobic exercise boosts your high-density lipoprotein (HDL), the “good,” cholesterol, and lowers your low-density lipoprotein (LDL), the “bad,” cholesterol. This may result in less buildup of plaques in your arteries.
  8. Boost your mood
    Aerobic exercise may ease the gloominess of depression, reduce the tension associated with anxiety and promote relaxation. It can also improve your sleep.
  9. Stay active and independent as you age
    Aerobic exercise keeps your muscles strong, which can help you maintain mobility as you get older. Exercise can also lower the risk of falls and injuries from falls in older adults. And it can improve your quality of life.Aerobic exercise also keeps your mind sharp. Regular physical activity may help protect memory, reasoning, judgment and thinking skills (cognitive function) in older adults. It may also improve cognitive function in children and young adults. It can even help prevent the onset of dementia and improve cognition in people with dementia.
  10. Live longer
    Studies show that people who participate in regular aerobic exercise live longer than those who don’t exercise regularly. They may also have a lower risk of dying of all causes, such as heart disease and certain cancers.
The Coast Centre Walkers cross the city from Kings Cross to Bondi Junction on a fine winter morning

Take the first step

Ready to get more active? Great. Just remember to start with small steps. If you’ve been inactive for a long time or if you have a chronic health condition, get your doctor’s OK before you start.

When you’re ready to begin exercising, start slowly. You might walk five minutes in the morning and five minutes in the evening. Any physical activity is better than none at all.

The next day, add a few minutes to each walking session. Pick up the pace a bit, too. Soon, you could be walking briskly for at least 30 minutes a day and reaping all the benefits of regular aerobic activity. You can gain even more benefits if you exercise more.

Other options for aerobic exercise could include cross-country skiing, aerobic dancing, swimming, stair climbing, bicycling, jogging, elliptical training or rowing.

Aerobics with Danielle –

If you have a condition that limits your ability to participate in aerobic activities, ask your doctor about alternatives. If you have arthritis, for example, aquatic exercises may give you the benefits of aerobic activity without stressing your joints.

At The Coast Centre we have aerobic activities everyday of the week and walks every fortnight.

Article extracted from here

Tango Is Good For Your Brain

Research suggests that dancing the Tango greatly improves mental health.

Tango has shown a greater increase in mindfulness, as one has to be fully engaged in the present moment to execute complicated dance moves.

You can’t have a chat and dance tango.

This passionate dance needs effective communication between partners and to be able to really connect and feel what your partner is “telling”, you need to be 100% present every moment.

In this way, Tango can also act as a form of meditation. Especially if you close eyes, you will feel and connect with the music as well as move and flow with your dance partner.

It was also found to be the only physical activity associated with a lower risk of dementia. Tango is all about improvisation, as there are no fixed dance moves to follow. The dance requires split-second, rapid-fire decision making, which makes us use several brain functions at once — kinaesthetic, rational, musical and emotional — further increasing your neural connectivity.

When we take decisions by doing new physical or mental activities, our brain creates new neurological pathways. Because so many decisions are involved in dancing, it will ultimately help strengthen our muscle memory and the communication between multiple different neural systems.


You can join our Tango classes at the Coast Centre, commencing March 7, 2018 – learn more here

Benefits of Line Dancing

 

Line Dancing will:

  1. Teach you to dance.  If you can’t dance by yourself, how can you possibly expect to dance with a partner?  Line dancing teaches you to actually move your body.
  2. Improve your Balance: teaches you how to maintain your own balance while moving to the beat
  3. Help you Find the Beat:  Oh a big one.  Staying on beat (on time) is critical in any dance whether by yourself or with someone else.  Learning to find the beat and timing of any dance is critical before getting with a partner.
  4. Teach you basic footwork. Learn how to do triple steps, turns and spins, rocking steps and many other steps that you will use in every form of dance.
  5. Improve your confidence. Helps overcome feeling of having “two left feet”; Offers sense of pride and accomplishment  and improves your coordination.
  6. Provide you with a dance outlet whether you have a partner or not.  Today, it seems there is a line dance for just about any song you can think of.  If not, many line dances are timed that they can fit multiple songs providing you many dance opportunities.
  7. Provide you a way to practice.  You always hear that practice is necessary to improving your dance but you may not know exactly how to, or what to practice.  Line dances are a perfect structured means to practice dance technique.

And the list goes on and on.

Take advantage of the opportunities to improve  your dance.

Join Nancy this month .

 

Learn some exciting line dances, have a lot of fun!