Step has become one of the most popular cardio training activities. It involves learning to link together choreographed movements using just an adjustable height step, which allows you to vary the intensity of your exercise.
It's an activity with plenty going for it! In fact, it allows you to do sport while having fun and offers both physical and artistic benefits: burning calories, building muscle over the entire body, improving breathing, enhancing your posture and coordination.
The list of the benefits of step is long. This is why I decided to test a step class, just for you. Five, six, seven, eight!
Step is clearly a fitness lesson that attracts both sexes, as well as varied ages. To kit yourself out, all you need is a bottle of water and a step, which you can raise if you want depending on your aims and your fitness: if you want to slim your lower body, don't raise your step too much, whereas if you want to build up muscle, adjust the step higher.
Personally, I'm leaving my step just as it is. I think I'm suffering already!
The coach arrives and that is when you tell yourself that you're coming back, without thinking about the number of lessons she gives each day to be so well toned and muscular.
So that's the motivation, that's the aim.
Our coach's energy spreads through the room before even starting, and they don't mess about with the music, it seems just like your favourite dance floor.
Let's go!
As with every class, the warm-up is compulsory for starting correctly. Five minutes of basic steps are needed to wake up your muscles: basic walking, walking with knee raises, the tap up… these are THE steps to learn by heart.
For now, everyone follows and the rhythm of the music starts to train us.
Of course, the basics are for the start. Little by little we start to learn our choreography, transforming the basic steps into "more complex" steps.
We link together different movements to form "blocks". We repeat them over and over until the different steps stick in our minds, and the sequence of mambos, twists, turns and sashays are no longer a mystery to us.
We then combine different "blocks" of steps, in this case 3, so we don't end up just doing the same routine. The music gets more intense: louder and louder, faster and faster… everyone gradually starts to understand and master the steps… we want to give it our all!
Towards the end of the class, when everyone has absorbed the moves from A to Z, we end up in sync. This is when the music reaches its peak. We feel like we're in a reality TV show that's about to reveal who has won the prize for the best dance performance: everyone gives it their best shot!
And even if you are asking for more, there's a moment when your body says no, you have no energy left. Time for stretching: calves first, then buttocks, thighs and finally the back. A round of applause for the steppers!
I leave the step class exhausted, and probably bright red, but with the rhythm under my skin. I feel like every muscle has been used without exception, even my cheeks. Since then I've been hooked, and never miss a class. Definitely something to take up straight away!