Jayda Hall // Sports Director
Former Miami Heat dancer and current FIU trainer, Tiffany Jackson, wants to see your booty work.
The class, which is open to students for free and held on Tuesdays at 1 p.m. at BBC, doesn’t include jumping jacks and lunges. Instead, a choreography is created and students perform it multiple times to get their hearts pumping and glutes jumping.
Jackson includes hip rolls, ‘90s moves and a form of voguing called waacking, which consists of moving the arms over and behind the shoulder to a music beat. Although students get their workout in through choreography, Jackson makes sure to emphasize technique in all of the moves.
During her class, Jackson made students forget they were ever working out by letting them freestyle while doing her choreography and telling them to have facial expressions.
“I took her in the spring, and I try to come to her class twice a week,” Junior Victoria Padron said to Student Media. “What I like a lot is the enthusiasm, and once you leave the class it really helps with any insecurities.”
Padron said that she hopes to gain “more confidence” from the class, and Jackson does her best to make sure that’s what the students learn.
“I’m doing what I love,” Jackson said. “I love when the women say, ‘oh my God that was amazing.’ I want them to learn confidence because as women we always look at things as negative. I want women to embrace everything and just let it jiggle.”
Although the class focused mainly on the glutes, Jackson made sure to include crunches and bicycles performed on mats and arm movements to help sculpt students’ core and build arm muscles.
When students started to feel the burn she would say, “I know you feel it, but you’ve got to do the other side.”
“You don’t realize how much calories you’re burning just by dancing,” she said. “I don’t work out my arms. People see my arms and they’re like ‘you’re ripped, you must lift weights,’ and I’m like ‘no, I’m just dancing.’”
Jackson is going on her second year working at FIU. She came down from North Carolina and tried out to be a Miami Heat dancer; she made the team and danced for the Heat from 2009-2010.
Along with being a fitness instructor at FIU, Jackson has her own nonprofit organization named “Love Dolls.” The organization is for girls ages 18 and older and gives them the opportunity to be apart of a dance team without having any background experience. Jackson says that “dedication can’t be taught, but the dancers can be taught technique.”