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“Fitness Twerking,” “Twerk fitness,” or the “Twerkout,” is a new emerging fitness craze. Although I’ve never been much into copied fitness fads, I’m intrigued by this one for visual reasons.
Often, I can spend hours gathering information for and writing an article only to spend a few minutes finding some suitable images or videos to go with it. For some reason, it was the other way around this time.
“Twerk out,” “twerk fitness,” “fitness twerking”
Dancing and fitness are closely related, especially when it comes to cardio. After all, they are both simply ways to get the body moving, resulting in increased heart rate. Dance is often used in fitness, think of aerobics and later Zumba.
After Pole Fitness (pole dancing as a form of fitness), it was only a matter of time until someone came up with the idea of introducing twerking as a form of fitness, especially after Miley’s performance at the VMAs in 2013.
If you found all those terms from CrossFit like burpees and wall ball difficult to understand, what about exercises like Booty Pop, Booty Clap, Body Roll, and Booty Dunk? I think it has something to do with the booty.
What is the difference between twerking and fitness twerking? As far as I can tell, actually nothing. If you were to go to a dance school to learn twerking, you would probably do exactly the same thing. The only difference is that this happens in a gym, and besides having fun dancing, you also want to improve your body. However, many dancers share that goal, so there is no real difference.
Possibly the threshold is lower. You are already training somewhere, doing group classes, and at some point, you see that fitness twerking is also being offered. Then it’s a smaller step to join in than to sign up for a dance school.
On the other hand, you could just watch the YouTube instructional videos, but some people will miss the group feeling.
Does it work?
It won’t surprise you that there have been no scientific studies conducted on the effects of twerking. The only sensible thing I can say about it is that many movements are performed in such a way that the buttocks are accentuated. Often, this translates into movements that are most similar to a squat in terms of fitness exercise, by bending the knees to push the buttocks backward. In terms of muscle strength, you would expect the same effects as from a bodyweight squat.
In terms of fat burning, it largely depends on the pace at which you work and how long you train or dance. In practice, the speed mainly depends on the music being played. In general, the more technical a movement is, the more time you spend learning the technique. Time that then comes at the expense of actually doing the technique at the right pace. Now, as a man, I can’t judge whether twerking is technically difficult and to what extent this can be a disadvantage. From the footage, it appears that the cliché that white girls can’t shake their butts no longer holds true.
Fitness Twerking: Just another gimmick to lure people into the gym?
Of course.
I have often said that many forms of group classes have a much greater added value to me due to motivation than the content of the lesson itself. I am convinced that an individual program, tailored to your wishes and capacity, always works better than a group class. That’s also a bit of the point Mart made in his article about group classes. However, such a custom program means that you must have the right knowledge or sufficient budget for a personal trainer. If you do it alone, you also need to be able to push yourself.
Many group classes have the greatest advantage of getting people into the gym who don’t like seeing themselves jogging on a treadmill and certainly don’t dare to step into that scary weightlifting area with all those macho guys. If a group class manages to get you into the gym, that’s great.
And who knows? Maybe you’ll actually start training someday (yeah, I said it).
Twerk fitness primarily relies on the popularity of dance and the enjoyment of performing it, not so much on supposedly well-thought-out training stimuli and physiological effects.
When I look at the video from the 1980s below, I think we’ve come a long way. Firstly, because I’d much rather watch the twerking ladies, and secondly, because men nowadays apparently understand that there are some things that men shouldn’t attempt.
Conclusion
I haven’t seen twerk fitness in the Netherlands yet. If one day you walk into your gym and see all the men standing in front of the group class room window, you’ll know that twerk fitness has also reached our country.
Want to get started with fitness twerking? There are plenty of ladies who can explain how it’s done, like Keaira LaShae.
