When in doubt, twerk it out!
Excuse us while we regain our balance and normalized heart rates. Our Friday night was spent moving to a new kind of rhythm, and it wasn’t at the club – it was at the newest exercise class to hit our nation’s capital: the twerkout.
The dance move heard ’round the world was made popular by Miley Cyrus and Rihanna and who wouldn’t want their abs? If you’re guilty, keep reading. They’ve booty-shaked their way to strong bodies so we wanted to do the same, er… at least try to.
To no surprise, the twerkout craze started in L.A. and has wasted no time making its way to this side of the country. Christina Huertas, an instructor who freestyle-danced her way to the district from Florida, led the class at Joy of Motion. She began the hour with a choreographed warm-up, followed by a series of routines with repetitive motions (think Zumba, but with more isolated moves).
Her tunes were poppin’ and so were the booties.
“Make it jiggle! This is the one workout class you want everything to shake. It makes it sexy,” Huertas assured our class. She demonstrated different twerking styles and even had us doing push-ups and sit-ups to the hip hop beats. We then struggled through a tough ab series afterward.
Class finished with three “twerking stations”. The first station required dropping down low in typical Lil’ Jon and the Eastside Boyz fashion, the second station had a lot of hip circles, and the third had some back arches and stomps, which we’re pretty sure we accomplished by accident. All stations were interestingly different, but called for equally high levels of attitude. Huertas challenges participants of all levels to “make it your own.”
We started out looking like this…
But with some practice, we caught onto the routines.
We tried to move our bodies like Huertas, but we’ve accepted the fact we’ll have to keep practicing to look half as good. (Let’s just say no one will be hiring us for music video appearances any time soon.) Our thighs and abs are aching, so this class definitely did its job.
And in case you’re still not convinced, twerking is also Drake-approved.
