A New Version of Ballet Fitness that You'll Love
One of the new exercise trends is ballet fitness. This is a novel training discipline that combines the best of both worlds.
When we talk about ballet fitness, it’s best to first analyze both disciplines separately. On its own, ballet is not considered a sport. It’s naturally closer to artistic expression through movement combining elegance and sophistication at the same time.
At the same time, it’s a key discipline of dance for those who practice it, it offers very important physical, as well as mental benefits.
With the need to expand ballet into the field of exercise and training, came the birth of ballet fitness. Therefore, we now have ballet fitness, which is no more than the combination of both disciplines. As you can guess, it takes on the most attractive characteristics of each one and unifies them to create a new concept. With it, we have a novel way of practicing a sport.
What does ballet fitness consist of?
The idea of ballet fitness is to use ballet as the base of classical dance for those who practice it. The addition is the principal objective to stretch and tone the muscles and slim down.
In order to reach these goals, classical dance combines with more modern movements and can be a lot more attractive. At the same time, classical dance is the Barre á Terre or as it’s known in the fitness world, basic exercise.
So that a workout of ballet fitness is totally effective, strength training needs to be carried out and maintained at a moderate intensity. In order to be successful, it’s important to have body control. This includes breathing work, which is as important in this sport as in any other sport.
What are the benefits?
With continual practice, it’s possible to take advantage of a series of benefits that can be beneficial to your health. In addition, these can be very easy to achieve with activity as attractive as this:
- Toning of all muscle groups, since work is done with a great variety of movements.
- Improving and developing balance and flexibility
- It requires you to work on an important component which is coordination. This is because it uses diverse movements when doing exercises. At the same time, it includes music and rhythm, which intensifies the coordination work.
- Strengthening of the joints, which decreases the risk of certain types of injuries
- It’s important for good posture. Thanks to the erect position of ballet, and forward hips, there is better control of daily posture.
- It helps to stretch out the body and strengthen a great part of the musculature of the back and the middle section of the body.
- As an important study noted, thanks to the emotional factor, we’ll be able to improve our mental health with dance.
What does a session of ballet fitness consist of?
A session of ballet fitness is made up of the following steps:
- The first step is warming up: at this time, the musculature, just like the joints, reaches a temperature and adequate mobility for back strength. You can also use the ballet bar to move into different positions that allow for the activation of musculature.
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- Once you’re warmed up, you’ll then work on cardio. Here, the idea is to increase the heart rate. For this, you can do planks and squats in plié. The latter is also known as sumo squats, which is an abdominal exercise, among others.
- Lastly, and no less important, is flexibility work. In this phase, we introduce the music of ballet. This is when the movements become more fluid, which allows the heart rate to slow down and go back to the original state.
Now that you know everything about ballet fitness, we encourage you to look for a nearby place where you can practice it. What are you waiting for? Start this latest new trend!
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Buse, Zeynep & Sarikaya, Zeynep & Colucci, Erminia. (2017). The Effectiveness of Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) on Reducing Symptoms of Mental Illnesses: A Systematic Review.
- Karkou, V., Aithal, S., Zubala, A., & Meekums, B. (2019). Effectiveness of Dance Movement Therapy in the Treatment of Adults With Depression: A Systematic Review With Meta-Analyses. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 936.