Christina Delgado

My love for dancing started at a very young age. At three years old my Mom enrolled me in a ballet/tap class and I remember loving it so much but hating that it was at the same time as Saturday morning cartoons! As I got older, I expanded my repertoire to include jazz, lyrical, modern and cheerleading. As middle school approached, I realized more and more how much I loved to dance and set my sights for attending a magnet high school which had a program for dance. For four years, every day we had 2 hours of dance class. My Colombian Grandfather taught me how to cumbia and salsa of course but having the classical training from ballet really helped me pick up any type of choreography very easily. In high school, we were fortunate enough to have a teacher who went above and beyond to expose us to every type of dance style possible. We did everything from African (taught by real Africans with live drum players and all) to Swing. All along I was captain of the cheerleading squad, competed with private dance & cheerleading teams around the country, took classes at a private studio and still looked forward to dancing cumbia, salsa and merengue at parties with family and friends. Fast forward to 2011 where I found myself married with two baby girls and an extra 20 pounds! After my first daughter, I had lost all the weight fairly easily but after my second daughter, it wasn'€™t as easy. My brother in law had been taking Zumba® for the past few years and recently got licensed so I decided to try a few classes. I was immediately hooked! I was able to dance as passionately as I had growing up and exercise at the same time. The pounds just started disappearing and I knew right away that I had found something that would change my life. Doing Zumba® motivated me enough to try other forms of exercise including running and weight training and before I knew it I was back at my pre-baby weight and felt great! In September of 2011 I decided to get licensed and also got some other exciting news: we were expecting baby number three in May of 2012!!! I taught classes and exercised until I was 6 months pregnant with my son but had to stop due to a back injury. When my son was 4 months old I started hitting the gym HARD. I am currently doing Zumba and weight training 4-6 days a week.