Rebecca Henderson

I am hopelessly uncoordinated. In the past I’ve been accused of exaggerating for effect (and what writer doesn’t at times?), but I am not making it up when I say that I cannot move my arms and legs at the same time. One or the other, take your pick, but both together just isn’t going to happen. This is part of the reason why it was such a big deal for me to discover running as a sport — at long last, something athletic that I could do easily, mostly because running requires me to do very little with my arms, besides wave at my neighbors or click “next” on my iPod.

I am so uncoordinated that I never could learn how to swim. When I was a kid, I learned to tread water, but beyond that, I quit trying. Several years ago a friend challenged me to attempt learning again. She started by giving me a foam kick-board to practice moving my legs. No problem — I could kick my way back and forth across the pool all day long. Then she showed me how to move my arms and coordinate my breathing with the stroke. I suddenly lost all ability to kick. It really is too much to ask for me to have my arms, legs, head, and lungs all doing something different at the same time. I flopped around for a while longer that day, called it quits, and decided I’m more of a lounging-in-the-hot-tub person than a swimming laps person.

Last fall when a friend asked me to join a Zumba class with her for a few weeks, I quickly said yes (loud music and Latin dancing, what’s not to get excited about?) before I realized that this class would require me to move both my arms and my legs. And my hips. In front of other people.

First class, I was on the back row. I get really swept away when there’s loud music and when there’s a crowd, and this classroom was crowded — so I danced my little heart out and had a blast. Second class and third class, I made sure to arrive in the room early enough to get a spot in the middle row so that I could see the instructor better. For the fourth class, attendance was down, and there was a spot wide open on the first row. “You’re all going to need extra energy tonight, to make up for the ones who are missing,” the instructor yelled over the warm-up music. The class was definitely missing its usual vibe, and we were dragging our feet to get started.

I moved up to the spot on the front row. Now, I don’t know about other classes, but at this Zumba class the people on the front row know what they’re doing. They’ve been in the class the longest. They’ve memorized the routines. They have rhythm. They are not like me.

But on that night, our teacher was asking for energy. It’s more or less what she’s asked for in every class — “even if you can’t get all the steps, just keep moving to the beat and have a good time.” I decided that it didn’t matter that my steps aren’t perfect, that my arms tend to flail instead of looking smooth, that my hips just don’t move the same way the teacher’s do. I would get out there and flail my arms and shake my hips and keep doing the steps with enough energy to warrant a place on the front row. I samba-ed like we were at Carnival and mambo-ed like I grew up in Havana.

I was much sorer the day after class than I had been after the previous lessons. Soreness is an indication of how hard you’ve worked. In Zumba and in life, I want to be the kind of person who helps give the group energy by putting my heart into every step, not just mumbling and stumbling through the movements, but dancing all out even when I know I’m not going to be perfect.