Bollyrobics -New High Intensity Workouts of Indian Dance

Bollyrobics is a high impact cardio workout, but it’s a fun way to get cardio. That’s what motivates people to continue with these sessions. This makes you look good on the outside and feel good on the inside

Do you want to burn some calories?  Join Bollyrobics – New Cardio dance workout will make you sweat a lot.  Deepti Sami Full-time Bollywood Dance Instructor introduces bollyrobics to help people lose weight, work their hearts, tone up and have fun doing it.

Her team consisting, Payal Sahay, Barb Rieman and Rakhi Bhargava. The main purpose for taking bollyrobics is to lose weight.  Initially, it was a challenging task; gradually it turned out to be fun and enjoyment.  At the end of the class, the sweet part is you get time to relax (with yoga).

After a quick warm-up, the music becomes faster and Sami instructs the nine people taking part in the demonstration class to anchor their arms at their sides and move only their lower body. She quickly gathers her long black hair into a ponytail signalling the workout is about to go into high gear. The music speeds up and so do the movements accompanying it.

Sami then introduces the signature Bollywood arm moves, pet the dog; light the bulb. As the hand of one raised arm twists as if screwing in a light bulb, the hand of the lowered arm moves back and forth as if petting a dog.

Sami takes everything down several notches and starts a cool down that lasts several minutes before she warns: “Now is the worst part guys.” For five heart-pounding minutes everyone is petting the dog and lighting the bulb to Jai Ho (May Victory be Yours), the dance song at the end of the movie Slumdog Millionaire.

The workout looks to have reached the final cool down, but it hasn’t, Sami says. “It’s going to be fast — give it your best. Pet the dog, light the bulb!” she tells them. Five minutes later, Sami leads the group through several relaxing yoga moves done with controlled breathing.

Bollyrobics is a relatively new kind of high intensity workout similar to Zumba. Sami believes she is the first bollyrobics instructor in Edmonton; that’s why so many people have signed up for classes in the four short months since she started running them, she says.

Sami’s version of bollyrobics combines moves from the Indian dance form bharatnatyam, which she studied, when she was 3 1/2 years old until she was 18, with Bollywood-movie-style dancing. Bollywood dancing is rigid, whereas bollyrobics is all fluid motion, she explains.

Twenty-per-cent of the money Sami makes she donates to the Akshya Trust which provides healthy food, love and opportunity to rehabilitate the helpless, forsaken, mentally ill, old, sick and roadside destitute living and dying in the streets of Madurai, India.