Step aerobics- Instructor's viewpoint

What worked?
Step was more challenging of a class to coordinate than I had originally thought. Even if the moves were simple, it's hard to cue them before we started that particular movement, all the while, still staying on beat. I thought the three of us did a pretty good job with that for the little time of preparation that we had. I really enjoyed the songs that we had and thought the beat went well with the moves we did in class. I'm also glad that we added in the extra upbeat cardio because it mixed things up so people would not get bored and also got their heartrate up quite a bit.

What didn't work?
I could tell that a lot of people were not following for some of the more challenging portions of the choreography, which didn't really surprise me for beginning steppers, as I was the same at my first step class. It would have also helped to be in a more ideal studio; perhaps with more area for the students, mirrors to watch in, and maybe even microphones. I feel like the class could have also used a bit more of a relaxing cool down with a slower song at the end, especially since we ended on high intensity cardio.

What I would do differently...
I was quite nervous to lead this workout. Even with a dance background, I would have liked to have had more sessions on cueing and teaching before being put in front of a class to teach step, however, I think much of that comes with practice. I think that if we had been doing this for a while it would have helped to make changes such as starting everything on our left foot while saying "right lead" when facing the students so they could catch on better. The other thing I would change would be to either turn down the music in our instance or see if we could have headset microphones so that even the people in the back could hear us better and follow along.