Last month 7 of us from Exhilarate Fitness Studio flew to Johor to take the Zumba intructor B1 training course. It is a 2-day course which upon completion, makes us licensed Zumba instructors. Our own instructor Catherine, and her hubby were so amazingly supportive and accompanied us on our Zumba adventure!
We arrived the day before and went to Legoland! It was a fun-filled day of roller coaster rides! It was time for all the mummies to be kids themselves for once!! Lol!
The rides are designed more for children, so the only ones that were suitable for us giant kids were the two roller coasters and the water slide. We were lucky that it wasn't peak season and there was little or no queue at all for most of the rides.
After a good dose of fright and laughter, the next two days were dedicated to serious business. Training was from 9am to 5pm at Paragon Fitness Gym, also under the same management as the hotel we stayed at; Hotel Grand Paragon.
The training was conducted by ZES (Zumba Education Specialist) David Velez from Colombia. He is in charge of the South East Asia region. Both days started off with a 1hr Masterclass (Zumba session), followed by intervals of sit-down theory and stand-up-and-move-your-butt practical. There was a 1hr lunch break at midday and the days ended with another shorter Masterclass.
It was extremely exhausting and I'm glad I built up my stamina by attending double Zumba classes at home everyday for a week before going to JB! The second day was more tiring as we had to do more practical and had to go on stage, taking turns to lead one by one! We were really nervous about that bit and revised our work the night before, in the hotel room. Thank goodness we had our instructor with us, as she gave us some tips and plenty of encouragement!
In the end we realized we were worried for nothing, even if we blanked out on stage, ZES David would prompt and help us. The most we might stand to suffer was embarrassment! Lol!
There were over 40 participants from all over Malaysia and Singapore. We made quite a few new Zumba friends. In one of the exercises, I partnered a girl from KK and there was a group project too. We had to choreograph the steps to a song and present it to the whole class.
On the last night of training, although thoroughly exhausted, we went for the 90 minutes non-stop Masterclass led by ZES David Velez and Malaysia's only ZJ (Zumba Jammer) Deno Au, held at the hotel ballroom. When it comes to Zumba, we have an extra, reserve store of energy which we can activate once we hear the music!!! It's simply awesome! Some of our friends also flew in just for this event!
That night we relaxed with a well-deserved foot massage, followed by some fun karaoke!
This trip was an amazing experience! We had such a great time learning and having fun in the process! I'm so glad we decided to do this and now we are all certified Zumba instructors. We are qualified to teach Zumba anywhere in the world! Isn't that awesome?!
To top off this excellent adventure, we went shopping at JPO (Johor Premium Outlet) before flying home. It's a shopper's paradise, with so many branded goods at discounted prices!!
I had a smashing time with the girls. Thank you dearies for all the craziness and memories! Thanks to mummy and daddy duck; (Cat and Alex) for escorting all the scared little ducklings! Also not forgetting the other half of our Zumba family in Kuching for all the moral support and encouragement (including the photos of shoes & feet! Lol)!
Let's do this again some time ya?! ;)
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