It turns out I have no turn-out. So the bad news is that I’ll never be a professional ballerina (back-up plan, Sumo wrestler!). The good news is that it’s been a month and I have some very interesting results for you.
The Ballerina Workout Experiment
If you recall, I made a mish-mash out of Madonna’s (supposed) workout, the NYC ballet workout, and the Lotte Berk method. Basically it was the complete opposite of the Crossfit experiment. CrossFit is all about short sets with (hemorrhoid inducing) heavy weights. Madonna’s personal trainer, Tracey Anderson, summed up our new workout, “Never lift anything heavier than 3 lbs. This was a huge change for us.
So, this is what we did 3 times a week for a month (the other days we did cardio of some variety):
100 V-arm raises with 3-lb dumbbells
100 shoulder pulses with 3-lb dumbbells, each arm
100 bicep curls with 3-lb dumbbells, each arm
100 tricep kickbacks with 3-lb dumbbells, each arm
30 first position plie squats
30 second position plie squats
5 sets of diamond squats, holding for 10 seconds and alternated with 10 pelvic tilts
40 sideways squats with inner thigh squeeze
40 sideways squats with pelvic tilts
30 standing arabesque pulses, each leg
30 seated pretzel lifts, each leg
30 leg lifts from plank position, each leg
100 V-up sit-ups
100 yoga crunches
100 regular crunches
Pass Out.
*You must stretch each body part after you finish working it. The stretching is, apparently, very important for lengthening the muscle you just contracted. Ballerinas are ALL about the stretchy-stretchy.
The Promises
That you’ll look like Britney pre-mental breakdown. The theory behind light weight/high reps is that it builds “longer, leaner, more compact muscle.” They say if you work out like a dancer, you will look like a dancer (they say nothing, however, about how to get the genetics of a dancer). This intrigued us because Gym Buddy Allison, the one of us who puts on muscle the easiest and has the lowest body fat %, said CrossFit bulked her thighs out. Girlfriend loves her muscle but also loves her current jeans.
What I Liked About It
1. It is HARD. You think 3-pounders are wimpy? Do 100 reps. You will want to gnaw your own arm off just to escape the pain. I will never ever make fun of someone for using the baby weights again.
2. You can now bounce quarters off my perky butt (but if you do, be warned that I’m keeping the quarters – I need jelly bean money.)
3. Call me Gumby – I can do all my splits again.
4. My waist is smaller and I have visible definition in my top two abs. (No word yet from the remaining 4 but an expedition has been sent out. They’ve got to be there somewhere.) Seriously though, 300 situps a day!
What I Didn’t Like About It
1. I was sore every day. Chronically sore. For a month.
2. It takes forever to finish. At least 45 minutes. Usually an hour. And it’s boring counting to 100 that many times. We had to take turns counting while the other person told entertaining stories to take our minds off the monotony/pain.
3. You look stupid. I mean, I thought we got weird looks before when we were running around Monkey Bar Gymming and stuff. But if you think hanging by your knees from the chin-up bar will get you weird looks on the weight floor, try bringing in a set of lemon yellow rubber-coated 3-pounders and then parking it there for an hour. My pride did suffer.
4. It doesn’t hit every body part. Our chests, back & lats became so neglected that we started adding in those exercises on our “off” days because we were afraid of losing muscle there.
The Results
Since the promise was all about keeping the muscle while losing the bulk, we focused on our measurements, our strength tests and our body fat %. Besides Allison and I, Gym Buddy Candice participated for about half. Gym Buddies Mike, Megan and Shalom made occasional appearances. Their comments are at the end.
Charlotte’s Stats
Weight: – 1 lb
Arm: + 0.25 in.
Waist: – 0.5 in.
Hips: – 1 in.
Thigh: – 0.75 in.
Calf: – 0.25 in.
Body Fat %: no change
Allison’s Stats
Weight: no change
Arm: +0.25
Waist: -0.25
Hips: -0.75
Thigh: -0.25
Calf: no change
Body Fat %: no change
Conclusion
I’m not exactly sure what to make of our results. On one hand, the workout did as promised: save biceps, we went down on every measurement without losing any lean muscle mass. On the other hand, we’re talking about fractions of an inch – so you could just chalk it up to measurement error. Although I’m pretty sure my waist and hips are smaller as my clothes fit a bit differently.
And yet, I can’t do this workout all the time. At first it was kinda fun but it got boring pretty quick. It takes too much time. It isn’t a comprehensive enough workout. However, I think it did provide some positive results so I plan on throwing in “100’s days” every couple of weeks or so. I plan on keeping the 300 situps as I’d like to keep my top two abs from wandering away again. To all the people who said we’d lose muscle mass & strength, I’d have to say that is not true. Basically: awesome lower body shaping and core. Meh for everything else. It did not make me into a ballerina. Fun factor: 3 stars.
This seemed to be the general consensus from the Gym Buddies: It’s a lot harder than it looks. It will definitely make you sore.
Must have more data!! Any of you try this? What are your results?
Im a huge fan of watching you try everything (read: no I didnt test it out here) but given your experience. results, and BUTT LIFT I really could see doing it for short periods of time to shake up my routine!
45 minutes feels like a long time to me—–but for a finite number of weeks I (kindasorta need to) be in.
all about shaking up the body, huh? and Im the FIRST to admit I need to get back to the 100 reps and light weights for a while.
thanks for this, C!
Yeah, my first thought was that it sounded dull. I’d definitely have to have someone count for me – sometimes I lose count just trying to make it to 15! What can I say, I’m easily distracted.
Gena, I hear ya! I’ll be walking/running laps around my neighborhood and I’m thinking “how many was that?” And I usually only do four laps (4 miles). So sad. But seriously, anything that enables me to bounce anything (but desserts) off my butt is good for me, and fortunately for me I own a slew of wimpy-weights!
You do crossfit!? My friends dad owns one in seattle….i love it! You get to drag boulders and use kettlebells and be manly. its my fave. everything is super heavy, which i love. i hate little magazine workouts that tell you to lift 5 pound weights. Eff that. i want muscles.
so do you think it would be worthwhile to incorporate this routine say, once a week? I’m intrigued…
I cannot begin to imagine being this accountable — SO inspirational! Can’t wait to see how the Special Ops Workout goes. (I’m secretly — now not so much secretly — hoping the knowledge that you’re doing it will generate enough guilt in me that I do it more reliably, too.)
As for this particular program, it sounds fatally tedious. Also, I always equate heavier lifting to longer-lasting results, so I wonder if the results of this would stick around for long. Although sitting around to check out how fast they disappear probably does NOT make for a good (or great) fitness experiment.
I wasn’t reading when you set out on this experiment, but I’m going to do it. I have to look up what some of the moves actually are (diamond squats, sideways squats,yoga crunches).
I will take measurements today, get some 3 lb. wts (my husband will laugh), and get started on day 1 tomorrow. I’m trying to get rid of the 5 lbs. that have stuck, velcro-like to me since Jan/Feb. Let’s see how it goes.
Off days, I’ll be running, biking, yoga-ing, and Total Body Sculpt-ing. I’ll probably take one day off per week.
I did some of the ballerina moves for a bit (I’m not great on following through like you guys), and I also was quite sore. I believe I was seeing some definition in the thighs, and the butt seems to benefit. I’m going to keep some of the exercies in my routine once or twice a week. I found it somewhat tedious, but it was fun to pretend to be all graceful.
I couldn’t do it – and only it – all the time – it doesn’t feel like a hard enough workout. That probably is no good reason not to do it, but whatever. I do have the NYC ballet DVD (rental) to try (still) and have a bunch queued up on my Netflix, so this isn’t over!
I highly recommend a workout called “Squeeze.” It’s very similar to Lotte Burke, but adds more variety and more upper-body work.
Still not sure what some of the moves are (diamond squats, side squats) but I improvised. I have to say that I could feel my psoas muscles today, not common. One-hundred v-sit-ups? Wow, I had to do that in three parts.
I did feel like a bit of a tool buying the 3-lb. wts. (actually disappeared while my husband paid), and like you said – the workout’s a bit boring. I could see adding these moves into a regular workout.
I went ahead and bought the NYC Ballet Workout, it was on sale at Borders. I’ll be trying it tomorrow. Had a 8 mile bike ride today (with my three kids), and will be running 5k on the treadmill after they go to bed.
I’ve done the many reps/light weights workout before and although I do like the lighter weights I too get quickly bored doing 100 of the same thing.
But I got another question, and maybe it’s just insomnia haze. If you lost inches but virtually no pounds, you’ve in essence swapped more muscle for less fat because muscle is leaner than fat. So, therefore wouldn’t body fat % have to show a change because you created more muscle which manifested in the inches loss? Just curious.
Stephanie – excellent question! Short of submitting myself to a dissection, it’s hard to know exactly how much lean mass one has (muscle, bone & water) but I calculated my LMM at the beginning of the BW and it was 104.76. At the end of the BW, it was 105.00. So technically, I put on 1/4 lb of LMM. Not a huge gain but certainly not a loss. Allison’s LMM stayed exactly the same since her weight & BF % didn’t change.
Jeremy Likness (king of the six-pack!) has a more detailed analysis and a LMM calculator. But basically you can say that we lost inches but not muscle.
Where you really want to be worried is when you lose weight and gain BF%. So much more to say on this subject – think I’d better do a post! Thanks for the great question!
Hey–
I love your blog, although I haven’t tried anything myself. I thought I’d comment because I’m a ballet dancer. Well, for a start, you know how you say it’s boring and repetitious. Ballet tends to be repeating similar barre exercises every day of the week for about an hour. Next up, looking like a ballerina. You have to have danced for a reeeeeeeeeeally long time to have this, it’s very slowly built up. As for your turnout, you can do exercises to improve it. But if your parents gave you bad turnout, flat feet and weak ankles, you’re basically screwed. Sorry, but the Bolshoi won’t be inviting you in. Anyway, I’m so glad you tried this! You might want to try taking an actual ballet class once a month, you’ll see there’s a lot more than a workout. And who knows, you might actually have fun! Maybe. =)
Hey Charlotte. I did a little searching and I think this is the experiment you mentioned on my last post. It's really interesting and I'm glad to read about someone trying it especially since that someone is you.
I'm not surprised it worked b/c it does overload the muscles but you mentioned one major problem I assumed, boredom. I don't think I could crank out almost a 1000 repetitions. What happens when those sets of 100 aren't challenging 150 reps, 200 reps? No thanks. Like you, I'm sticking with metabolic resistance training.
"try bringing in a set of lemon yellow rubber-coated 3-pounders and then parking it there for an hour. My pride did suffer." Ha ha ha!! Well at least they weren't pink. 🙂
I just tried commenting but I don't think it worked. If it did sorry. Just wanted to say it's fun to read about someone trying this workout. (Assuming this is the experiment you were referring to on my last post.)
I'm not surprised it would work as the muscles are being overloaded but you mentioned one of the two problems I could see myself having with it, boredom. Yeesh. Almost a 1000 reps per workout. Says something about your discipline! Wow! My other issue would be efficiency. As you know from Crossfit there are much more efficient ways to workout. Then what happens when 100 reps become easy? 150? 200? I'm with ya and will stick with metabolic resistance training.
"try bringing in a set of lemon yellow rubber-coated 3-pounders and then parking it there for an hour. My pride did suffer." Ha ha ha!!! At least they weren't pink!
Well I have been in ballet for 15 years. College life has put a strain on the bank account so I haven't taken any formal dance/ballet classes for about 2 years. Needless to say, I'm pretty out of shape when it comes to turn out and technical things. I've been maintaining the physique while in school with tons of weightlifting so this workout was a total switch for me! I'm so used to heavy and was massively embarrassed to waltz past the guys I normally lift with to pick up the measly 3-lbers. Strange looks ensued, believe me.
Although I felt like I was betraying the Weightlifting Gods at first, I found that I really enjoyed it! I haven't done that amount of calisthenics like that in a very long time and I felt like I did back in my active dancing days!
I don't think I will do this workout everyday, but I will definitely incorporate it into my other routine. Monday and Thursday is weightlifting as normal, Tuesday and Friday is cardio/interval/fat burning/HIIT, Wednesday is this workout (amped up a bit with some more calisthenics like pushups and back crunches)! I really liked how it focused on legs and core; my normal weightlifting routine really only focuses on squats and leg presses so I loved the diversity!
Thanks for the awesome info!
~Kristin
I came across this post in looking up ballet workouts and I’m interested in giving it a shot. I just have a question about some of the exercises. I’ve found most of them but I’m curious about the 40 sideways squats with inner thigh squeeze. I’m not quite sure how you would execute this and I’ve tried searching it with no luck also with the pelvic tilt. It sounds a simple as do one sideway squat, pelvic tilt, etc but that seems too simple to me!
Any advise would be great!
Thank you, Angela
I can try and explain them but first I’d check your library for a book on The Lotte Berk method. There are tons of them out there – Physique 57 is one I know off the top of my head – and they have detailed pictures etc. Good luck and let me know how your own experiment goes!!
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