Getting Fit for the New Year 2.0

Lastly, I tested out Zumba Fitness Core, a dance fitness workout that partly re-creates the real-life phenomenon that combines sexy trainers with sexy, high-energy Latin beats and throngs of (mostly) gay men and (mostly) straight women. Zumba has grown so much in popularity (it’s the Jazzercize of the modern era) that live Zumba workout gatherings can be so enormous that, in some cases, over a hundred people show up to one class. No, thank you.

Not so with the at-home Zumba workout. I got sexy trainers (including Gina Grant, Tanya Beardsley, and Zumba creator Beto) who guided me through 30 routines that are as fast-paced and frenetic as they are in person. Again, the Kinect lets you dance controller free and see yourself on-screen, and you can rotate among 30 dances and 40 songs (some of the highlights: the Donnas, Kat DeLuna, and Enrique Iglesias). And, as you probably know from the commercials, Zumba works your abs like a million crunches, so after I managed to make it through a few songs I had to sit in a hot tub waiting for my abs to recover along with my breath. They did, and I got back up on the horse, er, Xbox 360, to do it all over again. Just not with the Beat Ballers. That game is for hardier stock than I.