My exercise regime envolves dancing like a loon in my living room with the remote in one hand, flicking through the music channels until I find songs (rather than adverts) that are good to dance to. I am far too vain to join a class or go to the gym – my face literally goes purple when I exercise. However, helpful husband of mine bought me this dvd for my birthday the other day. I have only done it twice so far, but here is my early verdict…
Well, first of all, it really is a workout. You think ballet is gentle and calm and won’t really help you lose weight; but you’d be wrong. Just the strength to keep my balance and kick my legs about made me quite out of breath. Before we’d even reached the actual bouncy aerobic bit, I was shamefully exhausted!
The dvd says it is for legs, bums and tums. Have you ever done a legs, bums and tums class? I did one once, and never went back. This dvd reminded me why. The problem is, the leg exercises are relentless. When you’re dancing around to Beyonce, you’re wiggling hips one minute, throwing arms around the next and generally strutting your stuff the next; my point being that one bit of your body gets a rest while the next bit takes over. All the muscles in my legs and bum were aching so so so much by the end of it because they are constantly getting worked.
Not so much emphasis on the tums part though, apart from a small bit at the end lying on a mat. It made a refreshing break! To be honest you do find yourself using your stomach muscles anyway while you’re doing the leg stuff, so I don’t suppose it matters. The best immediate improvement was on my posture though. I have found myself automatically sitting and straighter and my back pain has improved slightly. I will keep at it just for that!
Joey Bull makes a good presenter for a workout dvd. Her voice is soothing and her comments encouraging and I’m happy to keep watching her. Her arms are amazing! I wish she’d included just a couple of minutes giving us tips on how to make them look so great – surely it can’t be from just holding them out whilst doing the leg exercises. Not one press up on the dvd! My arms do ache from holding them out so much – my hands do end up resting on my hips. It would be nice to think that all I need to do it hold them out in second position and they’ll become slim and muscly.
The negatives are the same with any ballet workout. The repetition. It may work, but I can see it getting pretty boring pretty quickly. (Hopefully) when I see obvious results, it will encourage me to keep going, because if not, when I’m stood in my living room choosing whether to shake my thang with Christina, or to 50 leg lifts on each side, it will take will power to choose the dvd.
