These Instagram Live dance workouts are really helping me keep it together right now

by Rachel

I’ve been feeling periodically despondent over the past week, and am making an effort to cultivate joy as much as possible. I’ve also been vaguely aware of the fact that a workout would probably be a good idea right about now. My girlfriend recently came across Instagram Live dance classes/parties hosted by choreographer Ryan Heffington; they turned out the exact quarantine activity I was looking for.

Heffington is the owner of the LA fitness studio The Sweat Spot, which is closed for the foreseeable future. (At the end of each session, he puts out a call for Venmo and PayPal donations for Sweat Spot instructors who are now out of jobs.) The classes are super exuberant and fun — basically just moving your body to a great playlist (think: Robyn, Carly Rae Jepsen, ABBA) for 40 minutes.

I’m not a fan of complicated dance workouts or super intense workouts, so I was relieved by how doable these classes are, both in terms of the steps and the pace. The warmup involves some downward dogs and planks that I thought were harder than the actual workout, but the main part of the class is very easy/fairly unstructured/really low pressure. The hardest choreography you’ll encounter is a grapevine, and everything is so loose and chill that it’s hard to feel stressed if you’re not doing it quite right. The whole vibe is very “do what you can with what you’ve got.”

The classes only exist on IG Live right now, so you have to tune it at the scheduled time to dance along. (The next one will be Tuesday at 10 a.m. PT.) It works best to follow along on your phone, but if you want to do it on your computer, this Chrome plugin is helpful.

If you’re in need of a free/at-home/easy-access way to move your body and feel a tiny bit better, I think it’s worth following Ryan’s account/getting in on the next class. The workout itself is really uplifting, and there’s something extra special about knowing that 2,000+ people are dancing along with you. ⚡️

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Bodies, Living, coronavirus