Beautiful ballet workout!

I am completely amazed at the nothing-short-of-fantastic workout I completed today. I say completed because I ease into a new workout not arge into it and collapse in a sorry heap, and I’ve been progressively moving into Ballet Conditioning for the past two weeks or so. Today I went through the whole workout and am exhilarated, not just at going through the whole lot, but at how surprisingly wonderful this workout is.

Element: Ballet Conditioning is taught by Elise Gulan  who happens to be just what I think a ballet dancer should be. Graceful, gentle, feminine, pleasant, dreamy. She has a dancer’s body and a sunny smile and in her very soothing voice, takes you through a workout that’s energizing and relaxing all at the same time.

This long, long clip shows you the entire first segment of this video, but it  doesn’t capture the real work in the middle and the solid short cardiovascular and ab strengthening workout that ends it.

Elise begins with graceful stretches that will not be unfamiliar to a dancer. Bend forwards, light backbend, side stretches are part of most dance workouts, but here, you have to do them with ballet arms and with infinite grace. That means holding the core stable and in. Still, I didn’t think it was going to be very hard work and I even thought I’d keep this one aside to do on days when I’m a bit lazy. Ha!

You get a chair next and this substitutes nicely for the bar for the next few exercises. Elise moves on to several rounds of demi pliés , grand pliés and relevés (bends, on-the-toes). Now you already begin to feel the work being done by the legs – the calves, thighs and hips. There’s a whole round of tondues or pointing the foot forward, side, back, done slowly and then faster, with a lot of repetition taking it into the area of intense stretching. You do developes, (the leg bends in to touch the other knee and then stretches out) which feel very nice, until you begin to feel the upper thighs and sides of the hips working. Oh wow. Circles and lifts with the pointed foot come next and these are a lot of work too. But veyr beautiful work. They just plain feel good. You also do some “attitudes” which is when you bend one leg at 90 degrees and stretch it out.

All through these exercises, Elise explains what muscles are being targeted and what’s getting toned. She gives you the ballet terms for the positions, but this is just incidental knowledge. The workout is not to learn ballet but to tone up real good.

The part where I cheated (I didn’t do as many repetitions) was when she got to the slight jumps. I was happy to see I could do these, but didn’t want to push it the first time trying them out. But here’s where your heart rate goes up good and proper. A few minutes of this and you’re really warmed up for the mat section of selected pilates moves

The pilates section has a lot of scissors or single leg pulls. Also the criss cross, full fledged roll ups and bridge-style hip lifts with one leg outstrethced. Here the focus is not on a variety of exercises but doing a few in two or three rounds with more intensity. What thrilled me at this point was that I could do all of these, with good form, and when she said for extra challenge move your hands from behind your head and just reach them out gracefully in front and sides, I was able to do this. That’s the pilates I’ve been doing at work. There was no way I could ever have done this before getting into pilates. I was so delighted, I feel like going for another round now that I’ve rested a bit.

We end with a few stretches. What a workout. I remember not ending up with any pain after starting the pilates routine, but with this workout I can feel the muscles that have been called into action. Let’s see if they hurt tomorrow. Either way, I loved this workout and plan to stick with it at least thrice a week.

And oh, it made the omis that followed look juicier. I’m not sure how.

These are hard work. But you can feel straight away what it’s doing to tone the legs. Matter of fact, all through, Elise keeps telling you what move is doing what and this helps to keep you motivated way more than all the cheerleading you hear on exercise videos. Working with exercise videos, I’ve found that it really helps to spell out where you should be feeling the action and what it’s doing – it draws your focus to the spot and that concentration helps improve the move.