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 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 8, 2013

VB6 Eating Plan and Other Updates

51qV9xWV3OL._SY346_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_ Last week, I stumbled upon Mark Bittman’s Vegan Before Six book/diet plan on Twitter, and thought it sounded like the perfect plan to get me eating better. Although I haven’t been able to get a hold of a copy of VB6 yet, the plan is pretty simple. Eat vegan and mostly unprocessed before 6, and then eat mostly normally, in moderation, after 6. I’ll be trying to eat healthier, although probably not vegan, dinners.

I’ve tried to cut back lately (and I’m so inspired by all the ladies I talked to about their clean eating), but it’s been a mostly failing effort. My biggest weakness seems to be mac and cheese and other forms of pasta.

I’ll be making a few slight changes to this meal plan, since I can’t seem to part with yogurt (I love Chobani, and I think otherwise I’d struggle with finding good sources of protein given that I’m a pretty picky eater). It’s also the reason I’ve dubbed this the diet of my childhood. I refused to eat cheese (except for the occasional pizza–go figure)  and cream cheese and many other processed foods until my senior year of high school. I also weighed about 100 pounds as a result (although that’s not my goal here, I just want to develop a healthier lifestyle).

While I’ve done a lot of meal prepping and shopping for breakfast and lunch ideas (lots of fruits and veggies), I’ve yet to figure out what a lot of my dinner meals will be. I’m planning on attempting this avocado pasta sauce recipe with some whole wheat pasta tonight, but after that, I’ll probably be trying different combinations of stir frys and other healthy recipes. I’ve you’ve got healthy dinner ideas, feel free to send them this way so I don’t fall into a pasta rut again!

How do you figure out new and exciting healthy meals to eat?

—

In other news, I will finally be heading back to ballet either tonight (probably not because I’m having some lower right calf pain, again, ugh) or Thursday. I really want to go tonight, but since it’s the advance class, I’m thinking it’s probably best to just chill out and not push it, but I’ll probably throw on some Kinesio tape and see how today goes.

Filed Under: Ballet, Blog, Info, Outside Class Tagged With: , , , , Leave a Comment
June 25, 2013

Workout Motivation and Ballet Class Slumps

  Workout Motivation helps beat the heat

Everyone has their off weeks, and last week I had a bad one and I’ve seem to lost my workout motivation. Although I got 2.5 miles in on Monday while I was still at home with my sister, I only managed to get in .75 on Wednesday before I started to have knee issues while I was running on the indoor track and decided to quit since the Urban Scramble (a scavenger hunt with a lot of uphills and running on sidewalks) was the next day and I didn’t want to be hurting for that.

Once I got to the Urban Scramble, while my legs were feeling better, I decided to pass on two scavenger stops in University City since they were fairly far away from the other spots and all uphill. We ended up walking a lot of the first 2 miles (I was being pouty as my Garmin wasn’t starting up). We ran the last 1.3 miles roughly when my Garmin magically started working. After that race/scavenger hunt I was extremely sore (I did something wonky to my hip, but I’m not sure what), so Saturday morning ballet was a bit rough. I also woke up extremely tired, so I struggled through most of the class. Sunday became an unintentional rest day.

Yesterday I had the intention of running for 30 minutes on the track, but only got about a mile done since HQ and I didn’t get out the door until about 11, and even the indoor track was brutally hot. Since I had to head into work extremely early this morning, I’m hoping to fit in a bit of spinning plus about a mile on the treadmill and then some easy (if there is such a thing) fartlek training on the track (probably still indoors, the temps are super high here in Philly this week). I just need to pull myself out of this workout slump.

How do you pick yourself back up after a bad week of workouts?

Filed Under: Ballet, Blog, Etc., Running Tagged With: , , , , 3 Comments
June 20, 2013

Birthday Celebrations–Urban Scramble and more!

Birthday Cake

Today is my 22nd birthday (yes, cue the Taylor Swift music now). In the afternoon, I’ll be covering Campus Philly‘s Opportunity Fair via social media (both via their Twitter, Instagram and Vine and mine as well) but I’ll try not to overwhelm them.

After that’s over, I’ll be heading to Philadelphia Runner‘s Urban Scramble. It was supposed to be last week, but a chance of severe thunderstorms made them reschedule it (it barely rained, so I got to go to ballet class instead). I know some people were upset that the Urban Scramble got reschedule, but I was pretty happy. It gave me something fun and exciting to do on my birthday instead of just heading to work. So it getting rescheduled for today was kind of a win-win for me.

Other birthday weekend plans include going out to fancy dinner at White Dog Cafe (and using up some of a gift card to there ages ago) and ballet early on Saturday. Hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze in another run (besides the Urban Scramble) along the Schuylkill river trail, but I’ll be pretty busy this weekend because I’ll also be attending a Girl Develop It Philly workshop on WordPress which I received a scholarship for to cover the costs. I’m excited to continue to improve the look and functions of this website as well as to continue to spread the community aspect of it. I’m still looking for guest bloggers and people to interview, so if you’re a blogger, runner or adult ballerina (or instructor) and you’re interested in participating in some aspect of Adult Ballerina Project , make sure you fill out this Google Form.

What do your weekend plans consist of?

Filed Under: Blog, Running Tagged With: , , , , 7 Comments