Feel-good fitness: Inventive routines, music, dance make the right workout for hard times

Detroit Free Press (MCT) - A series of staccato sounds bounces up from the hardwood floors of a studio in Life Time Fitness in Novi, Mich. Dap-diggi-dap-diggi-dap. The banging resounds around the room like the percussion section of a marching band. Dap-diggi-dap-diggi-dap.

Men and women in their 20s to 40s gaze at their instructor, imitating her, pounding their drumsticks so hard perspiration starts trickling across their hairlines.

And that's the point.

Beating in unison, the group may look and sound like any ensemble of attentive music students, but they're also working out.

The class, called "Sweat the Rhythm," is one of several new, emerging workouts that are designed to make exercise feel less like exercise. Instead, it wraps fitness around the aggression of drumming and the attractiveness of music.

A class called "Bollyfit" in Ann Arbor, Mich., merges culture and fitness by incorporating Bollywood dance into workouts. Farmington (Mich.) Tennis Club and Birmingham (Mich.) Racquet Clubs offer cardio tennis, a combination that puts less emphasis on technique and more on drills, rallies and an aerobic workout. And Vixen Fitness in Detroit makes workouts of belly dancing, salsa, pole dances and even lap dances.

Dena Raptis, group fitness department head at Life Time Fitness, introduced athletic and dance versions of the "Sweat the Rhythm" class last month because she cannot stand getting stuck in mundane fitness routines _ a reason often cited for breaking countless workout resolutions.

"I was so bored of step and all of that," she says. "Yoga is yoga. Step is step. I can't do the same class over and over."

Raptis adds that "the same motion every day isn't effective. You need variety and movement."

Unique fitness classes have the added advantage of being fun, something Raptis says is essential given the funk the financial climate has people feeling .

"The economy sucks," says Raptis, whose background as a professional piano player , singer and occasional percussionist helped her create the class. "So it makes a difference in people when they can be happy and feel so good, when they're not asking 'What time is it?' while they're working out. Bringing out that joy of living is what music and dance does to you."

Classes like "Sweat the Rhythm" force people to use different muscle groups without feeling like they're being forced.

Raptis, 45, choreographs evolving moves for the one-hour class that are performed by pounding on inflatable balls with drumsticks and incorporate the lifting and heaving of the ball.

There is the "fly baby," where the drummers launch themselves into the air while hitting their drumsticks over their heads. And the "pogo stick," where they bang the ball with their sticks and follow with double jumps.

"It's fun!" says Felipe Gonzalez, 27, of Wixom, Mich., sweat staining his white shirt. "It helps me with my brain, in terms of counting rhythm and steps. And the choreography helps my coordination."

Thirty miles away in Ann Arbor, the pulsating rhythms of a song called "Dola Re Dola" filter through the stereo in another studio.

In it, two women sing in Hindi about a man they both love but cannot have. In the studio, the song is the soundtrack for the workout of a dozen women in a class called "Bollyfit."

Designed by Ann Arbor resident Anuja Rajendra, the class puts a fitness emphasis on the choreography and upbeat movements of the dances Bollywood movies made famous.

The dancers learn some steps each week, and by the end of an eight-week session, they will have pieced together a complete dance.

At the front of the room, Rajendra, a lithe mother of two, leads the women in a series of sweat-inducing hand gestures (mudras) , half-sits (araimandis) and other moves that, once put together, form a routine during the 6-minute song.

"Dola Re Dola," which means "the throb," a reference to the throb of the heart and of life, comes from the 2002 Bollywood movie "Devdas."

Rajendra is not concerned with mimicking the technical precision of the original dance, but focused on adapting the moves to fitness.

"One of the hardest things I do," she says, "is achieving the right balance of dance, fitness and accessibility."

Raised in Okemos, Mich., Rajendra, 36, began her training in classical Indian dance 30 years ago. For years, she performed with her two older siblings as the Rajendra Sisters Dance Troupe.

The dancing stopped when one sister , Rachana Rajendra, was killed in a car accident at the age of 27. For the next decade, Rajendra shoved dance aside.

"Just the idea of dancing," she says. "There wasn't joy in it."

That changed a couple of years ago, after the birth of her second son. She had gained 60 pounds with her first pregnancy and 45 pounds with her second, and "I was literally waddling around and looking for a way to get healthy again," she says.

"I started dancing, and not only was the weight coming off, but the joy was coming back. A spark that had been gone started re-emerging."

When friends wanted to learn, that prompted Rajendra to begin teaching a class at the YMCA two years ago. It became so popular that she parlayed the concept into Bollyfit and teaches it three times a week.

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The classes possess a peaceful, free-flowing feel. The routine's moves are not fixed and the people who attend often vote on them.

The classes have a sisterly quality _ Rajendra describes a move by shouting, "The legs move, but the hips get the credit!" _ and have drawn mostly women. Rajendra says men are welcome and could get their own class , like the one she will offer for toddlers within the coming months.

The women in the class say the social appeal mixed with the unorthodox workout keeps them interested.

"You feel like you're with a group of friends," says Deasha Perry, 22, of Ypsilanti, Mich. "I don't even think about it being exercise until the end, when I'm all wet and my muscles ache."

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© 2009, Detroit Free Press.