Sheila Lebedenko - Instructor

Sheila has been dancing and aerobicizing for almost 20 years. She competed in International ballroom and Latin dancing for over 5 years and was a USABDA National Finalist. She's studied belly dancing and performed at various venues in the Bay Area. She has also performed as a member of PB&G's High Maintenance Salsa/Jazz team.

Sheila regularly takes lessons in various dance styles to expand her knowledge and bring her students new moves and rhythms. Sheila introduces a new song and routine in every "dance fitness party," sometimes incorporating maracas, dance ribbons or other props. Sheila uses 70% Zumba® music and 30% from her personal style (including swing, hip hop, ballroom, or bollywood).

Sheila feels the passion in the music she chooses. She matches fun moves to the rhythms in the song so that her students can feel the music. All of Sheila's songs are choreographed so that you repeat the same move for the whole chorus, another move for the verse, a 3rd move for the instrumental section and so on. No song has more than 6-7 moves. There's enough repetition to make each routine simple and enough change to make it exciting!

Sheila believes in safely working out every muscle in the body during 1 hour of Zumba®. A slow warm-up prepares the upper and lower body for lots of chest, hip, shoulder, leg and abdominal action with "dancey," but simple low impact moves. She always ends with a cool-down/stretch and believes that increased flexibility leads to a greater range of motion, and therefore more fun and more fat burning. Students have so much fun that they don't realize they are burning between 500-1000 calories per hour!

Sheila is a member of the Zumba Instructor Network® and a Zumba® instructor at the SW YMCA (Thurs. 6:30PM), 24 Hour Fitness Hillsdale (Fri 8AM), 24 Hour Fitness Santa Teresa (Mon 8:30PM) and Dance Effects (Tues 9:30AM, Sat 8:30AM). She has also taught cardio dance, hi/low aerobics, cardio kickboxing, belly dancing and ballroom dancing.