With many fitness workouts to choose from, fitness enthusiasts are often confused regarding the benefits of each. In this article we’ll compare Aerobics and Zumba both in terms of the quality and entertainment value and in terms of fitness, weight loss and calorie consumption.

Should I join Zumba or Aerobics? This is one of the most asked questions when people call Delhi Dance Academy. These are people looking for a fitness workout most often with the objective of losing weight and sometimes for the purpose of generally staying fit or because they love to dance.

Zumba Vs Aerobics – Which one should I go for?

1. Losing weight

You lose weight when the number of calories you burn working out is more than the number of calories you intake. You burn fat by exhausting yourself and letting your body consume the stored fat. Typically in a gym, the cardiovascular exercises can be very monotonous and boring that’s why many people look for fitness workouts outside of the gym. Aerobics and Zumba are right up there when it comes to people’s choice for weight loss. A 1 hour Zumba session involves continuously moving your body in Latin American dance movements (specially selected strenuous ones) that make you sweat, exhaust you and help you burn fat. What’s most amazing is that you enjoy it because you’re dancing throughout.

Aerobics also continuously moves your body usually on techno music on PT/PE exercise type movements like “jumping jacks”, “v step”, “skipping”, “a step” etc. Aerobics includes 1 dedicated day a week of muscle based training which is carefully designed to work on every body part. However, because of the emphasis on muscle workouts and PE or PT type exercises and not dance movements, it feels a teeny bit harder than Zumba despite still working on the overall slow paced exhaustion of the human body and doing an equally good job at reducing weight.

TWO LEFT FEET? Zumba requires good body music coordination and those who can’t dance will find Aerobics a better option.

VERDICT: We think Zumba and Aerobics are neck to neck with Zumba taking the slight lead when it comes to weight loss if done equal number of days in a week.

2. Entertainment and Dance

Zumba is great fun thanks to its carefully selected Latin American music and when you’re performing steps from Salsa, Cumbia, Reggaeton, Meringue, Bachata, ChaChaCha, Tango, Martial Arts and even Bhangra, every session becomes a party! You learn new steps, which also helps if you want to take up learning one of these dance forms. Aerobics too has very good music, but you’re exercising to it, not dancing on it and it is very BEAT orientated, which is where it loses out on the artistic factor.

VERDICT: Zumba wins on entertainment and it’s a great way to learn how to dance many Latin American dance forms.

3. Muscle Building

Zumba is dancing and it exhausts your body quite homogeneously. Aerobics is designed to work on every body part individually and it involves dumbbells and steppers which give you that EXTRA strength.

VERDICT: Aerobics wins hands down when it comes to Muscle training.

Overall Verdict:

Zumba wins on Entertainment and is a better choice for those who love to Dance. Aerobics gives you a more muscular body because of body-part focus and is a good gym replacement. Both workouts burn a lot of calories per hour (600-800).

4. What should I join at Delhi Dance Academy? 

Join Zumba if you love dancing and the motive of joining is overall weight loss or stamina building. Join Aerobics if you want solid abs, thighs and want to lose weight and increase muscle mass at the same time. At Zumba we usually have 80% female members and for Aerobics we have 60% male members. Aerobics is 5 days a week and Zumba is 3 days a week at Delhi Dance Academy which means you will burn more calories per week doing Aerobics than Zumba.

Whether you join Zumba or Aerobics, either way you will do your body a big favour. At Delhi Dance Academy we have both, so why not visit our Zumba and Aerobics pages and choose based on what time slots suit you. Happy exercising!

Any other questions, tweet to us or contact us on Facebook and we’ll get back to you. Or leave your questions on our respective Aerobics or Zumba pages under “comments”.