Archives for July 2013

July 17, 2013

Stretching Series: Stretching Tips and The Back

In my previous posts, as well as on the Adult Ballerina Project Facebook,  I mentioned that I would be doing a post on stretching. I got some good requests and feedback on what type of stretches you’d like to see and I decided that rather than squeeze it all into a horrible 5 page long post or a short one without pictures that I’d do a series instead. So this will be the first of my stretching series and I’m starting with my favorite part of the body to stretch: The back!

83eb6bb7f3e5113d03859d2cf0cfcc79Before we begin with that, I’d like to give some of my general tips on stretching.

1. Bundle up. Ok, this may sound really unpleasant. Especially because it’s summer. But this has been a huge help in increasing my flexibility. When I stretch I typically wear tights, legwarmers, shorts, sweatpants, a leotard, and a sweater. As I heat up, I strip layers but I tend to leave my legwarmers and shorts on to keep my legs and hips nice and toasty. One word of caution if you do decide that this tip is something you’d like to try… don’t overdo it. Make sure you’re hydrated and that you’re not pouring sweat. It should serve to help get and keep your muscles warm, not to make you pass out from heat stroke.

2. Warm up for your warm up. This may sound silly but when I stretch I like to walk around the room fast for a few minutes, do a few jumping jacks, or something similar. Getting your blood flowing just a little bit will help your muscles warm up and be more flexible.

3. Use Therabands to help add some resistance or to help you grab your leg when your arms cant quite reach yet.

4. Make good use of fences, counters, doorways, couches. I love to stretch my legs out by just resting one on my counter like its a barre. When I’m at hotels I use the door frame to help me stretch my back out. Be creative and use whatever is safe that you can use to help aid you in stretching.

5. Don’t push yourself too far. Stretch just enough for a little discomfort and hold for 15 seconds. Then next time hold for 20, then 30 and so on. When it becomes “easy”, then push yourself a little farther and repeat the process. This will keep you from torn muscles.

6. If you’re having a stiff day, stretch after a warm bath.

7. You might not look like the hot babes in the yoga pictures you found online- and that’s ok! I get annoyed with this all the time. I imagine myself doing a stretch I see online and when I do it it looks TOTALLY different (and much less cute) than the pictures I saw. But lets get real- that’s what the person in the picture does for a living and they usually have also sat through hair and makeup (and get touched up) and are taking a full day to take like five pictures. Stretching isn’t about the visual product as much as it is making sure that your body is flexible and ready for dancin’.

Ok so now I’ll start with my favorite back stretches. I do these almost daily, if not twice daily. I have found that my posture has totally changed with these stretches and that my arabesque and port de bras have also improved as well.

back2

 

1. (Left to right) I start with a cobra pose focusing on keeping my shoulders down and pushing up with my sternum rather than my lower back.

2. Once I’ve reached that pose and have held it for about 30 seconds or longer, I bring my feet up as close to my head as I can get them. It’s ok if you can’t get them to your head yet, just keep trying by bringing them up as high as you can.

3. I always like to reverse my stretches. When I stretch one muscle group, I stretch the opposing muscle group. I find that this helps me avoid soreness and keeps me from having any part of my body from being more flexible one way than the other. Soooo, to reverse these back stretches I do a cat pose, remembering to pull up from the back as well as pushing up from the core.

back

 

4. From there I turn over and do a back bend, feet and hands flat on the floor. After holding as long as you’re able between 15 and 30 seconds.

5. Slowly go down onto your elbows one at a time. I like to put my hands together in the center but you can also put them parallel to each other on the ground. Start by staying on flat feet and holding for a few seconds, then go up on demi pointe. Hold.

6. Walk your feet outward as far as you can to see if you can straighten your legs. I’m still unable to straighten completely but I’m getting there. I find that the easiest way to get out of this pose is to just keep sliding until you’re laying on your back.

7. Last I like to lay on my back and sort of just wiggle around, loosening everything back up. It seems super counter intuitive that stretching would make you tight, right? But I’ve noticed that sometimes with back stretches, your back wants to revert back to it’s previous happy place right away after you’ve pushed it so I just roll out my back, twist around, and try to loosen it back up before I go about my business. 

This is also a great video that can be really helpful. Click here.

What stretches do you do to increase your back flexibility/strength? Also, what parts of the body do you want to see stretches for in this series? (I know that we got one request for knee stretching and I will be certain to get that done!)

Happy Stretching!

**Keep in mind, these are just MY favorite stretches and you definitely need to make sure are careful trying anything new.

Filed Under: Ballet, Info Tagged With: , , , , , 3 Comments
July 15, 2013

Ballet is (almost) like riding a bicycle

Ballet is (almost) like riding a bicycle

4093835537_170cc4a8a9As I’ve mentioned before, I unintentionally took 2 and half weeks off from ballet, starting with birthday plans and my WordPress class and extending all the way to the Fourth of July and bouts of the stomach flu (twice–I’m one lucky girl!). Fortunately, I finally got to go back this Saturday.

What Went Well in Class

The barre went really well. I didn’t have any trouble remembering combinations like I sometimes do when I first return after a break. Usually I’m miserable the first couple of classes back. I think it was a confidence boost that we had a relatively tiny class and the fact I was comfortably tucked in the middle of the barre, instead of my usual end space. My pirouettes seemed to be up to par with what they were (which isn’t necessarily the greatest). It was nice to know they hadn’t deteriorated.

What Didn’t

So I tried to find myself a nice spot in the middle of the floor, but everyone ended up gathering behind me (guess I wasn’t far back enough!) and I ended up being in the front row, and my brain ended up being slightly scattered. Although my balance seemed good during the barre portion, I couldn’t balance on my right leg to save my life. I just felt like I was watching myself struggle in the mirror. Once I left class, I had shooting pains in my lower right leg (it’s been having issues ever since something went wrong on the treadmill a few weeks ago). I have a feeling that’s what’s to blame for my lack of stability. Hopefully I’m able to make up with it with class on Monday (if my leg is up to it) and Saturday.

Future Plans

I probably won’t be updating as much this week, as it’s going to be super busy. I’ve got a few big articles to work on and I’m starting another Girl Develop It class on HTML/CSS that I’m super excited for. Hopefully I’ll be able to fit in some indoor runs this week too (heat wave all week in Philly) but we’ll see. I also stopped with my abs and legs challenge this week because the leg exercises were taking too much of a toll of my legs. But I did start getting back into stretching, which is a good sign.

What are your plans for this week?

 

Filed Under: Ballet, Blog Tagged With: , , , , Leave a Comment
July 11, 2013

Guest Post: Plus Sized Ballet

Plus Sized Ballet

When most people picture ballerinas in their head, this is what they see:

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It intimidates a lot of people.  Can you blame them?  Look at the strength, the balance, the grace.

But this is what I see when I think of ballerinas:

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picture courtesy of Festival School of Ballet

That’s me on the right. All 200+ pounds of me.  At my heaviest I was 260 pounds.  I never saw myself as that heavy but I also never thought of myself as ballerina material either.  Boy was I wrong.

When I first started my weight loss journey, I felt like I didn’t know my body anymore.  When I lost 30 pounds I knew I had to do something.  I felt like a clutz.  Not at all like the graceful person I knew I was.  So I started searching for an adult ballet class hoping to reclaim some of that grace. I just wanted to go through the basic positions, do some barre work and maybe, one day, try some floor combinations.  But please, don’t make me wear a leotard and tights.

Do you know how hard it can be to find an adult ballet class like this?  Well around me, it took me well over a year.  Every time I called a studio that had an adult class, I would ask the same two questions:

How advanced is your adult class? 

Most of the time they were full of former dancers.  I was told as a beginner I was welcome to try and keep up or I could take their little ones basic ballet.

Do you have a dress code for the adult class? 

The minute they said yes, leotard and tights, I said thank you very much and hung up the phone.  I wanted to try ballet and I was insecure enough about that.  But throw in my insecurities about being in a leotard and tights at my size and it was just too much to overcome.

I was lucky though and finally found a studio that said, come as you are! Yes, there are former dancers in the class but also people who have never danced before.  Come, try it!

I have never felt more at home than I did at that first class.  I wore my workout capris and a t-shirt.  I did invest in a pair of ballet shoes since I wanted to make the point, I wanted to work my way up to dance.  I didn’t just want the barre workout or a ballet booty class.  Those are great options, don’t get me wrong, but I wanted the grace of ballet to help me learn my now rapidly changing body.

I started with one 90 minute class a week.  Turns out floor combinations were always part of the class so I stumbled, tripped and slouched through my first weeks.  Slowly but surely, however, I got the hang of it.  I was doing floor combinations!  Already!  Next thing I knew it was two classes a week and hoping for more.

I found ballet was seeping into my everyday life.  I stood taller and in better alignment which in turn made lots of other things take on a whole different meaning.  My walk became more efficient since I was standing taller and using more of my lower core.  My biking became more challenging.  I had to add more tension to the stationary bike to accommodate my stronger legs.  And something very simple, but major happened – I don’t slouch anymore.  My core and back feel so much better.

Leaving class is one of the best feelings I’ve ever had.  I spend 90 minutes stretching, lengthening, reaching.  I feel so tall and lean at the end of it all.  I feel so confident and self-assured.  And let me tell you, THAT feeling will change your life in ways you could never imagine.

Why should plus size people try ballet?  It’s a great way to build lean muscle mass.  The entire class focuses on your core and the large muscle groups of your legs.  So even at the barre, you will burn lots of calories.  It’s an excellent way to build your lung capacity and stamina.  It teaches you about your body and how it works.  So no matter how big or small you are, your body will work better for you.  If you think your weight makes you appear clumsy, ballet will teach you to control your body better.  Even if you never lose an ounce, you will naturally become more graceful and self-controlled.

And most importantly, it is empowering.  When you feel confident, graceful and in control, nothing can stop you.   Anyone can do ballet.  There is nothing special required.  But ballet can certainly make you feel special.  There is nothing holding you back from trying it except you!  So get thee to a ballet studio and start dancing!

PS:  I’ve been doing ballet now for almost two years and I’m still not wearing leotard and tights.  But I’m starting to consider tights, believe it or not.  And maybe a leotard under a big tshirt?  I think I might becoming confident enough to try.

Filed Under: Ballerina Profiles, Ballet Tagged With: , , , 13 Comments
July 10, 2013

Summer TV Dance Shows Return: Breaking Pointe and Dance Academy

One of my favorite parts of the summer is the large selection of TV dance shows. While I’m not a So You Think You Can Dance fan, it’s one of the many popular dance shows that came back on this summer. I meant to try to get into it, but I just haven’t had the time. I also don’t have cable (although I do have an antenna that allows me to get most network channels, it doesn’t really like Fox). There’s two other dance shows taking over this summer though: Dance Academy and Breaking Pointe. To me, they’re great for when there’s not as many ballet performances to go see and when I’m too busy doing other things to make it into the studio (although I’ll be there tomorrow night, finally!)

breaking-pointe-previewBreaking Pointe

Breaking Pointe first premiered last summer on the CW and featured company members of Ballet West in Salt Lake City. Although the show tries to amp up a lot of the supposed drama (especially through portraying Allison DeBona as a prima ballerina), there’s a lot of good content in the show. The show gives you key insight into what ballet company life is really like. While one of my favorite dancers, Katie Martin, will no longer be featured after her contract wasn’t renewed with Ballet West last year, I’m excited to see Beckanne Sisk again. Sisk studied at the Rock School in Philadelphia and is one of the company’s younger members. I’m also excited to see them show us the lives of the members of the second company, which wasn’t included last year. Breaking Pointe Premieres July 22nd.

44383Dance Academy

Dance Academy is an Australian teen show, but don’t let that mislead you. There’s lots of dancing: modern, hip hop, and of course, ballet and pointe work. Although there’s some teenie bopper drama, of course, I like Dance Academy even more than I like Bunheads, because it portrays teenagers struggling through a dance academy preparing them for a possible company role in Australia’s première dance company. Seasons 1 and 2 are currently available on Netflix and season 3 just premiered on Monday. While the episodes are available in the US quite yet, the first one has already popped up on YouTube.

PS: If you like Dance Academy, many of the actors (Dena Kaplan, Tom Green, and Tim Pocock will be on Camp on NBC, which premieres tonight at 10.

Do you watch dance shows on TV? What’s your favorite show?

Filed Under: Ballet, Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , , 4 Comments
July 9, 2013

Ballet at home- DVDs, YouTube, and Tips

I am starting to feel like there’s an overarching theme to my posts- I’M BUSY! haha. But, to be honest, a big part of my life as a grad student who is also in the beginning stage of an internship is that I don’t have a lot of free time and the free time that I do have is at weird hours. I’m sure there are plenty of ladies and gents who may be reading this can relate to this! One of my favorite ways to get around this issue is to do ballet at home. This can be a real challenge, especially for beginners who haven’t had much experience taking a class. Where do you even begin? Well, luckily I spend the time between classes on YouTube doing mindless searching and have created a nice list for you along with some of my favorite ballet at home tips!

dvdsDVDs

  • “Ballet Class for Beginners with David Howard”. This DVD is my favorite for home ballet. It can be a little bit frustrating because you have to play some parts twice in order to do both sides, but it’s a minor inconvenience in my opinion. I was able to find the DVD on Amazon for about $6 and got it in a matter of days. Smoking deal! It covers a ton of different techniques and the run time is about 40 minutes, but that doesn’t include repeating. What I like about how it comes in chapters is that you can choose to mix and match your workout so that it never has to be exactly the same. 
  • The NYC Ballet Complete Workout. This DVD is less ballet class, more ballet fitness but it has much more ballet in it than most ballet inspired workout videos do. It takes moves like pliés and mixes them in with bicycles and crunches. It’s rough! I have managed to rope my fiancé into doing the videos with me and they even make him sore. The video isn’t necessarily the newest so the video and the music is super cheesy but thankfully you can choose to use the classical music in the startup menu rather than the awful “hip” background music. You can get it here on Amazon. 
  • Ballet Beautiful by Mary Helen Bowers. Holy grail of ballet fitness. The workouts are more based around the idea of sculpting a lean ballet body rather than ballet technique but I find that the workouts greatly improved my posture and technique in class. She has a few different DVDs. I have the “Classic 60 – Minute Workout” (which has since been rebranded as “Total Body Workout”) and “Body Blast”. Both are available here at the Ballet Beautiful website.  The DVD’s consist of approximately 15 minute workouts including two butt series, her bridge series, her famous swan arms series, total body workouts, and more. What I like about this format is that the workouts are totally mix and match-able. You can do 15 minutes of a total body workout, or you can build up to about an hour or more of workouts. It really just depends on what you have time for! Another wonderful asset she provides are her online streaming videos. They are similar to the DVDs but you can have access to them any time you have access to the website.

YouTube

  • Dancing’s technique based and educational videos. These videos are great! They’re made by eHow… Ok, slightly cheesy seeming but they have been so helpful to me. I suck, like bad, at things like rond de jambe and I love being able to watch these videos at home over and over again to see how it’s done and to try it. I have found value in almost all of their ballet videos. There is such a wide variety- warming up, technique, how to care for ballet shoes, how to do your hair.  Click here and start checking it out! 
  • Maestro Greenwood Online Classes. These videos are also really great. They have a lot of technique practice and they include some video with verbal instruction as well as video with just music. I enjoy that because there are times where I just want to hear classical music and copy what I see, but then there are other times where I really want to focus harder on exact technique. I also really appreciate the stretching videos! Click!

General Tips

  • Keep an inner instructor in your head. I try to my best to focus on my technique at home. It can be really hard to make sure you’re doing some things well when you don’t have someone there watching to correct you so try to remind yourself “posture”,  “breathe”, “stomach tight”, etc. Focus on technique because if you keep practicing it incorrectly at home, you may find yourself in a sticky mess when you finally get to a class and it’s twice as hard because you need to forget how to do it the incorrect way and learn to do it the correct way. 
  • Invest in a full length mirror you can move around if you don’t have one. It’s important to be able to see what your body is doing in order to do the step above. There are some pretty affordable mirrors at Target, Walmart, and thrift stores.
  • Build a barre (shameless plug to my DIY post! haha), or use a counter/chair/couch/railing. That extra balance is important, particularly for beginners, in order to help you learn the best technique and also to prevent injury from falling face first into the floor. haha.
  • Try to avoid doing ballet on carpet, it can be a little extra sticky under your feet and cause some tripping/toe injuries. If you do ballet on tile or wood flooring make sure you have proper traction.
  • If you can, try to video even just a portion of your workout… I totally get what some of you may be thinking: AWKWARD, I don’t want to see myself dancing. But I assure you, it will help you get better! You’ll have a nice opportunity to watch back the video and see that this whole time you thought your ronde de jambe was perfect but alas you forget to point your toes in the back! Or maybe you might even find something you’re doing better than you thought you were.

For now, I think that’s all I have for videos and tips but I will be sure to post again when I have more. I hope that you at home ballerinas find this a little bit helpful. Does anyone else have any home ballet tips or favorite videos to use? Let me know in the comments!

-Caysie

Filed Under: Ballet, Info, Outside Class Tagged With: , , , , 13 Comments