Help Us Find the Studios Near You!
Our closest locations will display on the search results page.

Three Ways Dance Lessons Are Better Than A Gym Membership

BLOGHere come the holidays.

And here come the parties, the snacks, the beverages, the little overindulgences that make clothing a bit too tight for comfort.

Hey, we like to look good in our smart outfits. Even a couple of pounds can cause distress. We know how easy it is to add a few and how hard it is to get them to vanish.

So what’s the answer? Every gym operator will tell you that New Year’s resolutions create a logjam at the sales desk. Usually those resolutions falter after a month or two. But we can offer you a better place to shape up, a more fun venue to burn those extra calories and an exciting way to surround yourself with people who share your interests.

Dance lessons. Dance lessons at Fred Astaire Dance Studios. Better than a gym. Lots of ways. Here’s four top reasons:

  • Dance provides an excellent all-around workout… without pretending to be a workout. Workouts tend to be that thing we “must” do, while dance is an expression of joy and emotion that provides similar benefits. In 2016, Sciencedirect.com did a study and observed this: “The acute responses to classes of partnered Latin dance and non-partnered Latin-themed aerobic dance suggest that in physically inactive women participation is indeed efficacious in terms of community-based physical activity and psycho-social health promotion.” In English, that means dance works as an exercise, while also building stronger social attachments. Which leads us to…
  • A sense of family and community. You will often hear us refer to our Fred Astaire Dance Studio family – that’s how we feel about our students, our instructors and our community. We’re linked. Dancing is social, interactive and certainly lends itself well to partner activities. The gym? Eh, not so much. Everyone has headphones on, everyone is staring at a screen (TV, phone, monitor on the workout equipment) and everyone is performing a rote activity seemingly out of necessity rather than desire. Is that what you want? You’d rather have 30 minutes on a treadmill than 30 minutes doing salsa in our studio with people who are actually paying attention to (gasp) another person and not an electronic device?
  • Gyms are crowded exactly when you want to be there. Before work. After work. Lunch time. We squeeze in our workouts when we can and we are squeezed in by others as we do. Ever been walking on a treadmill when the next Olympic marathoner begins a 20-mile run at an incline? It’s discouraging. Tired of signing up at the gym and waiting for a stepper or a bike? You don’t wait at FADS. It’s go, go, go. You dance. With a partner, without a partner, it’s all good. Once you walk through the door, your feet get busy and energy surges through your body. You can schedule private ballroom dance lessons or take a group dance class in so many different styles of dance –salsa, Latin, waltz, cha-cha – and not be a faceless entity laboring in anonymity toward this goal of “fitness.” You can dance at our many practice parties, enjoy new partners, build your dance repertoire and your physical conditioning in a supportive atmosphere. And, again, there’s no waiting.
  • Working out is boring. Face it, it’s good for you, but it’s boring. It’s so by-the-numbers, so rote. Lift, run, stretch. Hence the headphones, the music, the TV, and the isolation. Well, if you like music … you’re going to love FADS. Here’s a little secret – without music, there’s no dancing. So you get to enjoy a variety of sounds, whether it’s a Latin beat or something in ¾ time, that stirs you and makes you want to move. You dance, you burn calories, you get more fit and you have the opportunity to dance with others. That’s a part of mental fitness – healthy engagement with your peers, your associates, your FADS family. We also encourage you to stretch after dancing, because we rely so much on personal attention. Has that happened lately at your gym? No? We knew that.

Fitness encompasses a broad spectrum. It’s physical, it’s emotional and it’s intellectual. Motivation is critical. When you join a Fred Astaire Dance Studio, you embrace physical fitness and social engagement while improving your skills in ballroom dance. Four out of four ain’t bad.

There’s nothing wrong with your local gym. But everything is right at Fred Astaire Dance Studios, where you condition body, mind and spirit.