Ballet Beautiful: Transform Your Body and Gain the Strength, Grace and Focus of a Ballet Dancer by Mary Helen Bowers Page A
Authors: Mary Helen Bowers
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bottle from home and sip on it throughout the day.
The Ballet Beautiful Principles
Before we get started, here’s a reminder of the Ballet Beautiful principles:
1
Connect with Your Center
Ballet dancers have incredibly strong centers because we are constantly pulling in and engaging our abdominals. This action can change the simplest step, exercise, or even resting position into a great ab workout. This doesn’t just mean sucking in your breath to try to flatten your stomach. Connecting to your center is about pulling in your lower abs, the place between your hip bones and underneath your belly button. It’s what happens naturally when you laugh or gasp with surprise.
2
Think Like a Swan
The key to elegant posture is keeping your neck long and your shoulders down. Sometimes, in an effort to keep your chest open or shoulders back, you might tense and pull up your shoulders. Instead, think about opening your chest, keeping your neck long and graceful like a swan, and gently pulling your shoulder blades down into your back. You are lifting through your chest and center as you push your shoulders down.
3
Work Within Your Range of Motion
The easiest way to hurt your joints is by forcing your range of motion. Be mindful of the range of motion in your knees and hips and be certain that when you take a standing plié (a bend in the knees; see “Your Ballet Primer” on page 49 ), your knees line up right over your toes. My joints are very flexible, and your position may not be as open as mine. That’s okay! Be mindful of what works best for your body to protect your joints, and take it slow.
4
Change the Shape of Your Legs by Stretching Your Knees
When I talk about the concept of stretching long through your muscles during an exercise, this is what I mean. Learning to work with your knees fully straight and in a lifted, strong position will radically change the shape of your legs and take years off of your figure. Work with your knees either straight or bent—no in between. When doing any straight-leg exercises on the mat, like my Inner Thigh Series, it’s important to keep your knee pulled up (but not locked) and engaged while stretching long through the leg. The same is true for my standing exercises—pay close attention to the bend and stretch in your knees. Not only will this help you shape your legs beautifully and get rid of saggy over-the-knee skin, but it will strengthen your joints and protect them.
One final note before we get started: make sure to read through the workouts first so you can familiarize yourself with the movements and pace. You can even “mark” the steps before you begin, testing the shape of your body in each movement without fully exerting and performing the full exercise. Dancers do this all the time when learning new combinations—marking the steps first. Marking is like writing a rough draft or taking notes with your body and your muscle memory, and it’s a great way to get familiar with new steps and movements. Discovering a new way of moving and working the body may seem awkward at first, but trust me, you’ll get the hang of it in no time.
Chapter 5
The Classic 60-Minute Ballet Beautiful Workout
T his chapter highlights the Classic Ballet Beautiful Workout, a comprehensive, hour-long workout that targets the upper body, center, arms, legs, and butt. The Classic is the best place to learn how the different elements of Ballet Beautiful are put into practice. This all-over body workout, with a focus on toning exercises through mat and resistance work, is a totally doable workout—for the beginner, intermediate, or trained expert! Anyone can benefit from how it targets and strengthens your ballet muscles, transforming the shape of your lines. I used a version of this workout daily when I was dancing with the New York City Ballet to keep me centered and strong.
Here’s an outline of how it works. After a gentle five-minute stretch, you begin to target the five
The Ballet Beautiful Principles
Before we get started, here’s a reminder of the Ballet Beautiful principles:
1
Connect with Your Center
Ballet dancers have incredibly strong centers because we are constantly pulling in and engaging our abdominals. This action can change the simplest step, exercise, or even resting position into a great ab workout. This doesn’t just mean sucking in your breath to try to flatten your stomach. Connecting to your center is about pulling in your lower abs, the place between your hip bones and underneath your belly button. It’s what happens naturally when you laugh or gasp with surprise.
2
Think Like a Swan
The key to elegant posture is keeping your neck long and your shoulders down. Sometimes, in an effort to keep your chest open or shoulders back, you might tense and pull up your shoulders. Instead, think about opening your chest, keeping your neck long and graceful like a swan, and gently pulling your shoulder blades down into your back. You are lifting through your chest and center as you push your shoulders down.
3
Work Within Your Range of Motion
The easiest way to hurt your joints is by forcing your range of motion. Be mindful of the range of motion in your knees and hips and be certain that when you take a standing plié (a bend in the knees; see “Your Ballet Primer” on page 49 ), your knees line up right over your toes. My joints are very flexible, and your position may not be as open as mine. That’s okay! Be mindful of what works best for your body to protect your joints, and take it slow.
4
Change the Shape of Your Legs by Stretching Your Knees
When I talk about the concept of stretching long through your muscles during an exercise, this is what I mean. Learning to work with your knees fully straight and in a lifted, strong position will radically change the shape of your legs and take years off of your figure. Work with your knees either straight or bent—no in between. When doing any straight-leg exercises on the mat, like my Inner Thigh Series, it’s important to keep your knee pulled up (but not locked) and engaged while stretching long through the leg. The same is true for my standing exercises—pay close attention to the bend and stretch in your knees. Not only will this help you shape your legs beautifully and get rid of saggy over-the-knee skin, but it will strengthen your joints and protect them.
One final note before we get started: make sure to read through the workouts first so you can familiarize yourself with the movements and pace. You can even “mark” the steps before you begin, testing the shape of your body in each movement without fully exerting and performing the full exercise. Dancers do this all the time when learning new combinations—marking the steps first. Marking is like writing a rough draft or taking notes with your body and your muscle memory, and it’s a great way to get familiar with new steps and movements. Discovering a new way of moving and working the body may seem awkward at first, but trust me, you’ll get the hang of it in no time.
Chapter 5
The Classic 60-Minute Ballet Beautiful Workout
T his chapter highlights the Classic Ballet Beautiful Workout, a comprehensive, hour-long workout that targets the upper body, center, arms, legs, and butt. The Classic is the best place to learn how the different elements of Ballet Beautiful are put into practice. This all-over body workout, with a focus on toning exercises through mat and resistance work, is a totally doable workout—for the beginner, intermediate, or trained expert! Anyone can benefit from how it targets and strengthens your ballet muscles, transforming the shape of your lines. I used a version of this workout daily when I was dancing with the New York City Ballet to keep me centered and strong.
Here’s an outline of how it works. After a gentle five-minute stretch, you begin to target the five
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