Element: Ballet Conditioning

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Element: Ballet Conditioning

List Price: $14.98
Lowest Price: $8.05

Product Description:

Ballet Dancers always have slender bodies that are both strong and lean with lovely proportion and gorgeous body lines. One of the greatest secrets to a dancer's body is ballet conditioning which focuses on all muscle groups. In this unique program your muscles will work smoothly in unison to create a long streamlined silhouette with flat abs a lean lower body and beautifully defined curves. Moving gracefully and fluidly through this series of exercises you will strengthen and stretch your way to a dancer s body.Element is proud to support the Arbor Day Foundation. For every four Element DVDs purchased a tree will be planted (up to 20000 trees annually). In addition to generating oxygen trees provide air pollution control and decrease atmospheric carbon dioxide levels thereby reducing global warming. www.arborday.orgElise Gulan has over 18 years in dance education including Ballet Pointe Tap and Jazz. She was a principal soloist for the Virginia Ballet Company where she danced for seven years appearing in productions such as Copelia Swan Lake and Nutcracker Suite. She brought her love of expression through movement to her new career as a certified personal trainer and instructor of Yoga Core Fusion® and Core Energy Flow®. Elise enjoys helping her students to find their inner strength and to energize their joy of life through physical and mental fitness.System Requirements:Length: 51 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: HEALTH/FITNESS/DANCE Rating: NR UPC: 013131535198 Manufacturer No: DV15351

Amazon.com:

The instructor, Elise, was kind enough to answer some questions from Amazon.com about the Element line of DVDs.

Why do you think the recent trend for women is to seek the dancer’s silhouette?

Elise: A dancer’s silhouette is the ideal physique for a woman today. It provides strength through lean, elegant, streamlined muscles. The strengthening of the dance conditioning movements will help melt away fat while creating lean musculature that is still feminine and graceful. The stretching element of dance creates length, not only in the muscles, but in the spine as well. Training with ballet conditioning will give a woman a strong, tall slender body.

How did you manage to create a ballet conditioning program that doesn’t use a barre or any other equipment?

Elise: I created a workout that uses the strength of the core to create balance and stability in the body. The sequences on this dvd are both accessible and challenging for anyone! Many ballet conditioning exercises actually don’t use the barre as a weight-bearing tool—it’s only for balance. In this DVD a beginner can use a chair to aid in balance, as they build core strength. A more advanced practitioner can do much of the series without the aid of a chair, simply by bracing the body with the strength of the abdominals, and a lifted, elongated spine.

Who is this workout good for?

Elise: This workout is amazing for women and men of all shapes and sizes! Ballet Conditioning uses one’s own body weight as resistance, so it is safe to do every day, for women AND men… from the strongest athlete, to the ultimate newcomer to fitness. It works to build strong, lean muscle, raise the heart-rate, and speed up metabolism. Dance also helps create rhythm, grace, and balance while building a supple flexible spine. .

What do you think consumers will find different about Element DVDs from other workout programs?

Elise: I know that consumers will enjoy the pure elegance of these DVDs. This is what truly sets the ‘element’ series apart from other brands of DVDs. The Element DVD’s encourage a solid mind/body connection, which encourages practitioners to explore their physical edge, while being truly mentally & emotionally present in the moment. These programs are fluid and graceful in their movement, and provide a HUGE physical fitness element in a nurturing and encouraging environment. .

Tell us about the connection with this DVD and the efforts to reduce global warming.

Elise: Element DVDs support the harmony of mind and body, which encourages a social and global awareness. This harmony encourages us to do what we can to make a difference in the world. For every four Element DVDs sold, a tree will be planted in a national forest. Consumers are therefore doing their part to reduce their carbon footprint, and the dangerous effects of global warming. If we work together, we can spread health and happiness one deep breath at a time.

Customer Reviews:

Rating:
Date: 2008-07-02
fantastic way to tone those "soft" muscles
i haven't done any type of ballet or dance in years, and i purchased this after a recommendation in my shape magazine. i was not disappointed. it definitely uses all the muscles in your body to tone, AND actually gets the heart rate up! i was actually sore after my first workout!! the exercises build upon each other, so you can easily track your progress. i would recommend this to anyone who is looking to tone and build muscles!

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-30
A Waste of Money
This is not a conditioning class; it's simply a beginning ballet class taught by a very average ballet dancer. I wouldn't even recommend it to a beginner ballet student because you're liable to pick up some bad habits like sticking out your thumbs, and not working through your feet, both of which the teacher does routinely. And she doesn't have any business talking about how to develop the long, lean look of a dancer -- which she does ad nauseum -- since that's not the type of body she has. She has a nice figure, but it's definitely not a ballet dancer's body. If she has primarily been using dance as her means of exercise (as she implies) then she's been using her quadriceps to lift her legs into developpe, which is a definite no-no. If she comes out with an actual conditioning DVD, that might be good, but this one has no redeeming value to me.

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-22
Challenging and effective workout
This was a fun and challenging workout which really got me sweaty and feeling spent in a good way. I would caution people with injuries (especially in the knees as she really likes to have you do a lot of plies---including grand-plie which is a pretty big bend in the knees) to steer away from the this video. It is probably not best for a total beginner unless you feel comfortable modifying your exercises to your own abilities and if you do not mind that you might not yet be able to perform the exercises to the level of the woman on the screen. The exercises are actually reasonably easy to modify (do demi plies instead of grand-plies, put the hands on the hips is you get tired from keeping them in second position forever, only lift the leg to 30 or 45 degrees instead of 90 in grand battements etc). If you have never had any dance training (I have only had 6 months of a beginning adult classes) then I would probably think that the New York City Ballet Workout 1 is better for introducing some of the basic ballet steps while still getting a workout. Incorporate this into your workout routine and I do not know how you would not get results. And one more thing---you do not need to be flexible to do the workout as other reviewers have suggested---I had to work for ages to even touch my toes and I found this workout to be possible, with modification of course.

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-15
relaxing and effective
This workout helps to burn calories and relax at the same time. The movements are elegant and powerful. The abs are hard!

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-10
It works!
I thought this was a great, effective workout. I've only done the video about four or five times, and have already had a coworker ask if I have lost weight. My only issue with it is that the music is very new-age; not what you would associate with ballet.

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