Workout Review: New York City Ballet Workout Vol. 1

So today's DVD was one I have had in my collection for a while. I bought it years ago and had a vague memory that there was a lot of floor work, so I thought I'd give it a try.



Unfortunately, memory didn't serve up precision this time. This DVD is about the length of a dance class, and is packed full of ballet stuff like plies, tendus, and degages, but has very little floor work. It features four of the NYC Ballet dancers (two males and two females, so you bros can feel masculine about doing it), and takes you through warmups, stretching, floor bar, and standing leg work. Overall, it's a beautiful DVD, but it's not so good for us gimps.

Lower Leg Injury Compatibility: Poor
This DVD has many segments (I dunno--20?), and only 3 or 4 of them are dedicated to floor work . The exercises are good and make you feel all graceful and stuff, but there just aren't enough of them. There was a minute there during the sit-up segment when my abs started burning, but then it was over.

Body Part Focus: Abs, Back, and Hip-flexors
It shouldn't surprise you that a ballet workout focuses on the core. A curiously still torso is one of the hallmarks of ballet. So, the floor work that I could do was all core-centric: a situps segment (but pretty situps, cos ballet is pretty); side-lying leg-work segment; and a belly-lying back segment.

Standing on Crutches?: Not a Good Idea
I don't take defeat lying down, so I did try to do the standing work with a crutch nearby for stability. Ballet has a lot of work on one leg anyway so I thought it might work, but it didn't. First, it's just straight unpleasant. Keeping your balance is a pain, and since the gimpy foot can't keep up with the flexing and pointing, and can't really touch down at all, it's just a real pain coordination-wise. Then, even if you have uber-balance and can do one-foot tendus in your sleep, I'm not sure it's wise to train so unilaterally. If you develop the muscles on one side in one way, and then another way on the other side, it stands to reason that you might end of giving yourself some alignment issues. I'm no physical therapist or anything though, just saying.

So, overall, I can't recommend this ditty for us injured-types.