Juha Takkinen

Om Juha - About Juha

Juha is the most Scanian Finn living in the Swedish town of Linköping and loves dancing, exercising, and singing—sometimes all at once!

Juha was born in northern Finland and brought up in southern Sweden with dancing and physical exercising the Finnish way, by first accompanying his parents to Finnish social-dancing events as well as Scanian running competitions, being the designated driver for the former trips. When Juha moved to Malmö, he joined the Finnish folk-dance group in the Finnish Society, where he learned all the Finnish and other folk dances such as polkka, jenkka and mazurka. He also joined the Finnish choir of the society, where he learned to use his bass voice.

It was also in Malmö that Juha had his first magical group-exercise experience: an outdoor workout in Pildammsparken on August 25 in 1986, where Swedish "gympa" was done to live music performed by the band Solstollarna, Juha's musical favourites at that time.

While living in Malmö, Juha discovered and fell in love with Cuban salsa, which was introduced to the city in the summer of 1990 by the aptly named Caribbean Club; Juha still has his membership card, with number 3 on it. For his university studies, Juha moved to Linköping, where he started singing in the university male voice choir as well as taking up regular group-exercise classes. While getting to know Linköping better in the 1990s, Juha also took courses in modern dance as well as LA-style salsa, mixed with merengue, cha-cha-cha and bachata. He especially enjoyed the exercising to music so much that he decided to become an group-exercise instructor in 1998, in the discipline "gympa", then a very popular Swedish workout group-exercise. Later Juha also added instructing aerobics, step-up, and Bodypump® to his repertoire. He also learned to dance Argentinian tango.

Juha got the Zumba Fitness fever in the winter of 2010/11 and has since then been attending as many Zumba Fitness classes in his home town as he can. Juha took the Zumba Basic I course with Izabela Kin in February 2011 in Lohja, Finland, and the Zumba Gold course with Lars Wensink in August 2011 in Oslo, Norway. Steve Boedt was his teacher in the Basic 2 course, which he took in November in Gothenburg, Sweden. When Juha learned Aqua Zumba in Beckenham, Kent, United Kingdom, in December 2011, he had Caroline Parsons as his teacher. Juha introduced Zumba Gold to the city of Linköping in Sweden.

In his spare time Juha regularly joins salsa and bachata events in Stockholm as well as attends Zumba Marathons, such as the ones organized by Nordic Fitness Weekend at Bosö, ZumbaGo at Fryshuset and Stockholm Z Center on Sveavägen, all located in Stockholm. His favourite sports include cycling, running, swimming, and cross-country skiing (he does The Swedish Classic every year) as well as instructing Bodypump and step-up classes. Juha enjoys singing in a chamber choir every other week.

In addition to the membership in the Zumba Instructor Network (ZIN), Juha is a member of the IDEA Health & Fitness Association as well as Korpen Swedish Exercise Federation and The Swedish University Sports Federation (SAIF).

Juha has a long and strong background in instructing group exercises to music. When Juha hears good music, he cannot resist the urge to dance. His basic philosophy when creating Zumba Fitness classes is to always stay true to the Zumba formula, which among other things means using easy steps that belong to the specific dance style and creating a choreography that is consistent with the music and spiced with the help of the lyrics. Juha is 100% Swedish 100% Finnish 100% Zumba.

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