I’ve been taking a dance class with a fabulous instructor, Rachel, for 10.5 years now. This past weekend was Rachel’s last regularly scheduled cardio dance class and I’m impressed she managed to stay in it for as long as she has. This made me consider how I got to where I am today and my dance history.

Let me take you back a little through some of my dance history. I started dancing when I was, maybe, 5 or 6. I took ballet, jazz and then gymnastics classes. Ballet never was a good fit for me but jazz was awesome. I loved it so much. Eventually, before I started 7th grade (that was when school sports began at my school) I had to decide if I wanted to continue dance and gymnastics or if I wanted to play team sports (which I had been playing also since I was really young). I chose team sports but never hesitated to break out my “moves” at jr. high and high school dances. Then I went to college. I played volleyball in college with some girls who LOVED to dance. It’s no wonder I loved that team so much. It was a whole bunch of girls who shared my love of sport, laughter and entertainment all in one place.  Now, technically we weren’t allowed to dance at my Nazarene College. We managed to get by that by calling it “choreographed movement” but going out dancing was prohibited. My team’s spirit couldn’t be hampered though. We danced in the vans on the way to games. We danced in our rooms. We danced during warm-ups. We even danced on the sidewalk in Chicago once (GP are ya with me? Oh yeah, we havin’ church we ain’t goin no where!). We ALLEGEDLY MAY HAVE gone out to a club dancing a few times – but nobody would admit it and you can’t prove it! We had a lot hinging on our staying on the right side of the rules due to scholarships and our love for our coach so we didn’t go crazy (I mean, we weren’t the baseball team – just sayin’ 😉 ).

Eventually I graduated from college and went on to do my own thing for a couple of years. After a while of living with my parents after college, I needed my independence and moved in with one of my best buds from college, Andrea, in Columbus. We found the last “A” to round out our group, Aaron, and aside from playing volleyball, we went out dancing quite a bit. I had never sweat so much from just dancing up a storm. We didn’t dance “dirty”, we just went out and had fun dancing with each other. Sometimes we danced with other people but we weren’t going to bars to pick up anybody, we just wanted to have fun. Then disaster struck (for me) and I broke my leg .  After I had healed up (partially) from that injury I decided to get a second job at Lifetime Fitness in the hospitality department to force myself to walk on the painful leg.  That was the only way I was going to use it.

When I started at Lifetime Fitness initially I was dancing with a certified Zumba instructor, Diane, who was teaching a cardio dance class though it wasn’t specifically a Zumba class. I took her class for, probably a year, before one day I went in to talk to Diane about potentially becoming an instructor and there was Rachel (my future favorite instructor), already asking Diane about it. We both went on to get certified but I had to have another wrist surgery and Rachel went on to become one of the best cardio dance instructors, in my opinion, in Columbus.

I would take dance classes at Lifetime and it was AWESOME. I made friends. I got to throw myself into a second passion (aside from volleyball). It forced me to work hard. I would stand in the front row right near the instructor and push myself to work as hard as I could. Inevitably I had to take off a month or two every year because dancing is so hard on your body (at least… it is the way we do it). We had some great instructors, Rachel and Jess were my two favorites and I tried to hit up at least one of each of their classes a week. Jess ended up moving to California and Rachel moved on to a new studio so I cancelled my membership at Lifetime and went elsewhere to try to get a similar workout. It didn’t exist for me! By that time I was going on my 3rd wrist surgery and there was only one instructor who knew and understood why and how I had to modify – Rachel. I found out that she was teaching downtown at Seven Studios and signed up. That first class in… it was therapeutic. It was beautiful. It was killer. I was in love with a workout again.

Every time I attended the cardio dance class with Rachel I came out overflowing with endorphins and it lasted for the entire day. I would argue it actually lasted for a good part of the week. During that time I had 3 more wrist surgeries and missed out on quite a few months worth of classes due to it. Inevitably I would end up back in class remembering WHY I took the classes and I would stay until injuries or overworked body parts pulled me out again.  Three weeks ago I was included on a group message that Rachel was looking to retire her dancing sneaks and put on her barre shoes in their place. I had such mixed feeling because I knew she was probably dying inside so I was sad for her and I was mad at myself for not making it back to her classes sooner, yet I understood the toll the dancing took on her body.

I can’t imagine it will be Rachel’s last class of cardio dance. Her passion for dance is so strong and she created so many dances to so many songs over 10.5 years. My best guess is that she will sub occasionally and teach a special event here and there.  All I know is that I’ll keep an eye and an ear out and I’ll be there if she does put on her dancin’ shoes again!

Cheers to an awesome 10.5 years Rachel!