30 seconds.

My back is cramping.

Yeah.

Hi, my name is Scout Forsythe.

I'm a professional ballet dancer with american ballet theater And this week I am testing out ballet inspired workouts get that.

But what doesn't kill you?

Makes you stronger.

Am I right?

So, I know there's a lot of workouts out there that claim to be ballet inspired.

But I was really curious to see how ballet inspired they were.

Versus just some ballet sprinkled on Pilates or something like that.

I dove headfirst into five different workout.

I started with bar and then a recovery focused workout called the hammock method.

I did ballet workout called box arena fit.

Which is inspired by boxing.

And then I tried fit by kell which is a circuit and sculpt training for ballet dancers.

And then I finished it off with the train like a ballerina method which is all about keeping ballet dancers fit during whatever part of your season you're in.

The thing about ballerinas is that we are the perfect mixture of strength and flexibility.

And so I think that is something that's very unique seeing that and watching that, knowing that ballet dancers are so in tune with what's going on in every part of their being.

I think there's kind of an attraction to that.

Mm hmm.

So I took a bar class with a good friend of mine, Her name is Alyssa and she's a certified bar instructor.

It's inspired by Pilates.

Ballet yoga.

Every kind of training modality out there mixed into one And like it just swooped up ballet and they kind of mixed it together.

Most of the bar workout was in a standing position, but the leg was bent as opposed to ballet where your leg is almost always stretched and straightened.

And I noticed that by having my leg bent and working kind of the movement of the upper body, there was the stability muscles around the knees that were super fatigued and super sore the next day.

Those muscles are like kind of like the coils or the springs around your legs just gives you better jumps and it helps you land.

So to me, that's like, hey, I don't use this muscle enough.

So I think the reason that this class in particular, it's hard for me, even though it's kind of the most similar to an actual ballet class, was the repetition of doing something over and over and over again.

You know, I'm very used to you do something a couple of times and then you move, because ballet isn't just like standing there and lifting your arm up, lifting your arm up, we're dancing so there's a fluidity of movement in working our bar and in class.

Whereas this is a workout, like you want to get your blood pumping, you want to do something you want to fatigue your muscles.

So that was really hard to do a bunch of condoms and a bunch of players and Demi second like uh grab a sip of water if you need it morning sweating, then we got down to the ground and that was really awesome because there was a lot of really pretty movements that we're engaging the core and I was so sore the next day in my abs and my side laughing hurt.

All right, we're gonna start parallel on the side, so feet all the way together, no space between the legs bar.

We did a lot of movements and squats and stuff in parallel and parallel is not a classical ballet position, it's incorporated in a lot of dancing and more lyrical esque ballets and contemporary stuff, but you will not find a parallel dancer in a ballet, proper ballet.

The soreness though in that one hour bar class compared to like an hour or sorry, seven hours of rehearsing.

It's different when I come in the next day after a long rehearsal day, it's this over all.

Like almost everything in my body is going to snap crackle and pop and needs to be stretched.

Whereas after the bar workout, it was like the areas that we targeted were sore, you know, like, so like my upper body and shoulders weren't very sore, but my abs and my butt and my thighs and my hamstrings and my core.

Like those were sore.

I think that I'm going to start adding bar in more of an offseason sort of thing because it is a good workout and it is bali inspired.

I'm not sure that doing in the middle of performance season, I'm going to do a bar class because it's freaking hard, like you go hard in it.

Yeah.

Mhm.

The next ballet inspired workout I did was created by a professional ballet dancer.

I used to dance with her sister in american Ballet theater.

She's now retired.

Rachel Hamrick is the one that created the hammock method and she's also the inventor, the flexi stretcher.

And if you've watched any of my videos, you know that I love my flexi stretcher so much So I developed the hammered method for anyone looking to really strengthen and enhance their dancing and to avoid injury.

I've had a little bit of ankle instability which has led to an injury.

Unfortunately, I think she kind of tailored the whole class to what my needs were.

And we started immediately, just down on the ground, sitting, let's do some ankle stabilizing exercises.

The first thing we did was just on the ball just did relevant.

And like halves were almost cramping at certain points because being on a surface, it's so unstable, your working out and stabilizing at the same time.

So there's just like constant readjustment repositioning, reengaging happening.

So it's not just like, oh, I do relevant on a ball, it's like every single minute, tiny little, itsy bitsy muscle in my foot was just on fire and working.

So it was way harder than it looks Rachel invented another band down on the ground and we hooked one end of the strap to one ft on the other end to the other.

My legs were having resistance on them in that ballet movement while engaging the core.

So I'm not technically in a ballet classical position while doing this at work out where my legs are going back and forth, but instead of like a normal class where you go parallel back and forth, Rachel was like, let's point your legs, let's turn them out, let's get them moving.

I know for me when I go into dodgy, oh next or having any kind of grandma where I'm kicking my leg up and bringing it down, I'm gonna remember that motion of having that resistance and then not having the resistance and being able to like go for it because you've got that strength of you gain the strength of having it being kind of pulled down and away from you using the back of my legs.

Well, a lot of pushing down on the ball, you're already in this like, super unstable position and then she wants you to bend your legs and that's like the one motion where is very similar to a fondue, which is you extend and bend and extend and bend, but do it on a surface.

That's making you feel like you're like this, I went to fund is the next thing you guys was like a piece of cake towards the end of class up on my toes.

The ball is right behind my ankle.

So you're kind of resting on it.

So I'm not in a full relevant in like a quarter relevant.

Which is the most unstable place for me and for anybody that does my life because we don't work that we work, you know flat on the surface or up and relevant.

So this middle ground is kind of the more shaky aspect hard and we'd have to go down into a squat.

I was kind of in a parallel position.

But then I'd have to stand up keeping that relevant and kick my leg up to the side and hold.

That was a really cool one that I really, really liked ending with that exercise.

The next on the list was box arena fit and that marries boxing and ballet inspired workout together for a very low impact but a good hard workout.

Boxing food was pretty cool.

She was like the circuitous outfit.

Some of the first things we did was just like simple movements of like you were just doing our movements of like just really like kind of getting in the body and like like moving your hips side to side.

Mm hmm.

I love a scholar jewelry on and like rumors feel like she should go grab some farmers just looks so cute with them on.

And I need to do it.

I love a good label her over your tight.

The things that kind of just reminded me of the most ballet is like the way that she liked to move her arms.

There was one part where she had us doing full on swan arms and we were doing like Boris, but we weren't doing before is in the sense of like ballet where there you just keep your body up and like move the ankles, you're kind of just taking little tiny steps which were engaging like the but the Cavs, the inner thighs, which was very, very, very much like a ballet move.

Like that's what you do and swan, like you bore it and you bring your arms up and down.

So what was this torture is a swan lake.

Yes, there wasn't too much boxing in this one, but I think there were just some motions where we're doing stuff and she was like, okay, and punch and punch can't do it.

I think you're getting cut after really work of leg warmers.

She definitely is aware of where the body weight is.

And I think that's kind of where the boxing kind of came in because I think just from what I know and kind of, my not super deep knowledge of boxing is that they're constantly on your toes, moving to the next place, avoiding what's happening in front of you.

So, I think that was like the really cool aspect of using your body weight as your workout gear.

See the difference between Mount Lee and this is I don't do this on stage for 10 minutes straight.

Oh, my arms are killing me.

So, I'd say this workout was definitely more dance inspired than it was just like a ballet inspired workout.

I don't know if I would do something like that before a show or like in the middle of a heavy rehearsal period just because it's so hard to have Sundays and Mondays off when we're just rehearsing And on Mondays I like to do at least one decent plus he's inspired or something like work out where I'm just like, oh, that was hard and I'm getting a sweating.

That could be my new monday.

I'm really worried about this one.

She seems like a badass.

The next one I did was a sculpting class from fit by Kell.

Mm hmm.

It was just on youtube.

It was that simple.

You know what I loved about the overall workout part of it is that it was very, very, very ballet inspired.

Her classes definitely had some bar in them.

Like we started off in that second position.

We were just doing some please and then move the arms and move their arms.

Oh, the butt burner.

It wasn't so much about how many exercises she could fit into that half hour workout or that our work out.

It was the quality of them.

So when I was doing some kind of movement, I could kind of almost zone out in a sense you have a dog over there coach cal you're killing me.

There was a lot of stuff when we were using the bar that was very very ballet as facing the bar.

And I'm lifting my leg so the ponch and this is a ballet move.

You're standing at the bar or you're dancing with a partner and he's behind you and he's holding you and your one leg is standing down straight, so that's at six o'clock and your back leg is at around nine o'clock and it goes 10, 11, 12 and you're in like a straight up and down line of your legs and your body is trying to stay as lifted and as pretty and up and like oh this is so easy and effortless.

And you're like uh mm The things that weren't ballet was like a lot of the floor work is honestly a movement had never done before.

That's pretty funny.

It's like learning new choreography.

We're just like what flanking is not something you do in ballet, but it's super helpful for core strength and overall body strength.

And it's a really really good quick warm up, especially if you're like running late.

What's the one thing I could do?

I swear all the dancers are down there planks because it kind of fires that whole body and that whole internal core, you're having to like hug and hold my arm Fit by cal 100% behind her would absolutely do it again.

Mm.

Yeah.

So the last ballet inspired workout I did was called the T.

L.

B.

Method.

The T.

L.

B.

Method was kind of similar to the hammock method in the sense of especially in the ballet section that it was made for dancers.

You have kind of made for people that do already understand the basis of ballet.

Ballet 101.

And it was really easy.

It's on an app.

I went to hear ballet.

So these were ballet targeted and then I went to posture and I tried to do advanced and that was too hard so that I went to intermediate.

The T.

L.

B.

Method definitely was ballet inspired.

But again, a lot of like the floor workouts, art ballet, a lot of movements that we were doing our ballet at 17 with a B.

T.

R.

Teacher director was kate Lydon and kate Lydon had the most beautiful porta bra and the most like smiley ist face when she did it.

And whenever we would do this kind of motion with her hand, she always said scoop the ice cream, scoop the ice cream scoop the ice cream always moving hungry for ice cream in the middle of dance class.

All right.

The verb E.

Ege was definitely ballet words instead of their translation from french.

I knew what they were talking about.

I understood like when we were laying down and she said arms up in fifth and so like you know you lift your body up and you put your arms in fifth and then you go back behind.

Now this is a ballet move necessarily but by understanding that she says arms up in fifth and then arms behind your back in a lo fifth.

Like I understand what that movement was and then ending with just something as simple as placing my hand on the chair and I had, I didn't have a weight so I use a water bottle and just lifting it up because it's engaging those back muscles that are holding you and so say you get all those fired up and then you stand up and you're like, oh okay, cool cause you're pinching your upper spine together where you're like, oh okay, that's the movement.

So it just kind of took that ballet picture and kind of put it in different extremes that you wouldn't necessarily do in a ballet class and engage muscles that you're like, hey, I felt those in a while, posture, something that is so it just is ballot like there is no way to get around doing valley not having good posture, but I rarely just take a posture class.

Like I rarely think of like, oh what do the exercises that I can do for myself right now to strengthen my upper spine.

So it was really cool to have that kind of focus and that class, that was just for posture because that's not something I do every day to have this thought process when I was younger that worked out too much.