a t i s h e h

Returning to Bellydance Arms & Posture

Today, in an attempt to begin my resolution (actually made after I finished this video), I worked again with Rachel Brice’s Bellydance Arms & Posture.

I did it, in short, because of pain. Shoulder pain. Upper back pain. Stiff neck. I have a great DVD for yoga-based shoulder work by Jill Miller, and it really is great, but I wanted a bit of dance too. Just in case you’re wondering how bad my shoulders are: there is enough loud cracking in my upper back every time I roll my shoulders that I know whether I’m keeping time with the music or not. (I know: you really needed to know that.)

Rachel Brice performing shoulder exercises

The rope pulling exercise

On the one hand, I was stiff, my shoulders were weak, and I still see no point in the knee-hurting level changes she covers that have nothing to do with the rest of the workout. On the other hand, I was much more inspired by Bellydance Arms & Posture this time around. Although Brice doesn’t have you do a lot on posture per se, working so much on the shoulders just has that effect. The practice periods for moves like sidewinder are long enough to actually *get* it. And there’s a cute little combination at the end that, done enough times, is something you can adapt to other kinds of dance.

I also really appreciated the soothing, yoga-based warmup and cool down. The video is a cohesive unit, and if it’s not as comprehensive a source for arm work as dancers might want, it’s easy to commit to fifty minutes and just do it. And the neck stretches — Brice didn’t forget the neck stretches! Bless her.

After it was over, and to my surprise, I found myself just dancing. For some reason, loosening up the shoulder area (and live dance teachers are always telling me to keep my shoulders down) was strangely liberating for the rest of my body. Wonderful!

Quickie Review of Balletone – Center Moves

I picked up Balletone – Center Moves a few days ago at Half Price Books, and was disappointed when I got home to find it had been poorly reviewed on Amazon. Too fast, they said, too many unexplained ballet movements.

Well, since I have no background in ballet, and I am the *worst* at moving quickly or anything like, well, center moves, I worried. But I did the video yesterday anyway, and was delighted to find it a really graceful, dancey cardio workout, which had me gleefully moving and stretching for a sweaty forty minutes.

Balletone Center Moves standing ballet exercise

Actually, there are very few ballet terms used in this video, and those that are are explained. The workout is basically composed of a series of movements which are gradually added on and rehearsed, until by the end you find yourself doing an entire little routine. In that sense, it can be a bit boring, since you do the same movements many, many times over. However, that’s also a chance to learn the movements better, and to get to the point (if not on the first viewing, then on the second) where you don’t have to think about them anymore.

Balletone – Center Moves also incorporates little strength moves (especially leg lifts) and side stretches into the routine. This does mean that you don’t have non-stop movement, but you do get to work on balance, which is also part of being fit.

In short, I liked it, I can see myself doing this video again with pleasure, and I think it’s a great companion to the more static ballet-based workout programs.

Enough is Enough: A Resolution

A confession: I have a lot, and I do mean a lot of dance and workout videos. I wager the number is around a hundred, though I would fear to admit to more. And yet I haven’t danced — at least regularly — in ages, and as much as I love the yoga or pilates videos too, I don’t do those with any kind of regularity either.

So here’s my goal, and I won’t spend too many words on it: to try and do every one once, at least two videos a week. I think to aim for more than two would be too ambitious, and even two a week (or one) would be an enormous improvement. And then, because there’s nothing like bragging for motivation, to use this blog to track my progress.

What I won’t do is be methodical: I won’t work extensively with one video unless I really feel like it, and I won’t pay too much attention to balancing things out. If I feel like lots of silly cardio, I’ll do that, and if I’m in a bellydance mood for a while, I’ll do that. And I’m allowed repeats. Let’s see how this goes!

Pleasant Surprises: Hemelaya Behl’s Yoga for Urban Living

There’s nothing quite like surpassed expectations. I didn’t have particularly high hopes for Hemalaya’s Yoga for Urban Living (her ads for her other workout videos always look so cheesy), but it was super-cheap and had decent reviews on Amazon. Also, I wanted quickie workouts I could fit into my schedule, so it seemed worth the risk.

The DVD has three programs, “Morning Quickie” (about half an hour), “Evening Bath” (25 min), and “Daily Connection” (1 hr). I’ve done “Morning Quickie” a few times, and found it a nice, simple set of sun salutations and twists that get my back more flexible at the start of the day.

You’ll get to your yoga practice faster if you don’t bother with pants

Last night, I decided to try “Evening Bath,” since my back was still a little sore from the previous day’s bellydance marathon. It turns out that it actually was very relaxing. The music is toned down, Hemalaya speaks in a soothing, quiet voice, and the positions are more of the resting or deep stretch kind. Except — the shoulder stand! There was an entire shoulder stand series, which I found surprising. I must admit I worried a little about my back while doing them, but I woke up this morning feeling great, so I guess it must have worked.

All in all, the program really helped me relax and stretch my back muscles. In fact, for most of the DVD, I was able to follow her verbal instructions and ignore the screen altogether. The funny thing is this: it was only last night that I noticed the third program, which is an hour long, and just when I’ve been looking for longer yoga videos! Yoga for Urban Living indeed.

Working with Love Potion: The Bellydance Workout – Day 1, Tutorial

I’m always inspired by the way Mala works systematically with a DVD. I tend not to be like that. I’m more of a butterfly — I see something interesting, I do it once, and then forget it on the shelf for a while. But I wanted to get back into dance, and I wanted to see what it might be like to do the same program, whether a workout, a choreography, or some mixture of both, repeatedly over a few days. Would I notice an improvement?

The perfect candidate for this experiment seemed to be Love Potion: The Bellydance Workout. Like other recent offerings from World Dance New York, it has an insane amount of material, a full 140 minutes of it. The DVD case advertises a 50 minute instructional section for beginners, which intersperses guidance on movements with segments of flow, a 5o minute practice flow, and the workout itself, which is 40 minutes long. I thought I’d commit to three days, and do one section on each day, progressing in difficulty as I go.

Sounds easy enough, and after watching the intro, I got ready to dance. What I didn’t realise was that the 50 minute instructional section is not actually 50 minutes long. It’s over an hour and a half. I suspect they mean that the instruction itself is 50 minutes long, if you put it all together, but there are enough segments from the flow section that doing the whole thing takes a long, long time. In a way, I’m glad I didn’t know what I was getting into, or I might have been too lazy to start!
A couple of observations on this first day: the moves are quite basic, but putting them together in combinations, with footwork, armwork, and all at full speed, is not so basic. It kind of reminds you how much bellydance can do with just a few simple movements. The footwork is covered quickly, but it would be worth learning well. I love, as usual, Neon’s gentle accent and the way she explains the principles behind movements. I also love that she gives pointers on head position and hand accents. This kind of attention to finesse has been a real focus in WDNY videos lately, and it’s most welcome. Also, in her introduction to Love Potion, Neon advises experienced dancers not to skip over slow movements, and she’s right: these are truly difficult to do smoothly.

Oh yeah, and I really need to work on my three-quarter shimmies.

After an hour and a half, I had to do some serious stretching. I can feel all my abdominal and back muscles (in a good way), to say nothing of my arms and shoulders. At one point during the instruction, my arms were really tired and drooping, and I felt that I must be really out of shape. I now realize this was probably after 80 minutes of keeping my arms up! Neon says in the introduction that this is not meant to be an aerobic workout, but a muscular one. This is truth in advertising — this is probably not the best way to spend your time if your goal is to lose weight, but a great way to practice sharp or gooey movements, footwork, coordination, grace, and musicality.

Full disclosure: I received a review copy of this DVD from World Dance New York.

Quickie Review: Annette Fletcher’s Perfect in Ten Pilates

Annette Fletcher’s Perfect in Ten: Pilates is a nice little whole-body workout, including light warmup and stretching.

First, a clarification: there are five segments. I suppose that the first one wasn’t advertised as a workout segment since it’s more of a warmup, but it does consist of pilates moves. Also, doing all five segments adds up to about 57 minutes of exercise. Somewhere, the math is off.

Fletcher is straightforward and clear — no perky encouragements here. I like that every single move and breath are cued. I also like that, for tougher moves, she will have you do a preparatory movement sequence, and that she sometimes shows modifications. (This is especially the case for ab work.)

The movements are indeed difficult, especially to do precisely. Still, except for the abs section, I can’t say I really felt much of a burn. Doing the arm, leg and glute work felt more like pleasant stretching than strength training. I’ve had a more intense workout from other pilates programs.

All in all, I’ll probably do the program again, though probably when I want a wake-up and stretching regimen with some mild strength training.

Quickie Review: MaDonna Grimes’ Urban Street Heat

Let’s face it: the ultimate test of a workout video is whether you want to keep doing it.

MaDonna Grimes’ Urban Street Heat has the tight structure of a typical cardio dance workout: she adds on a move at a time, adds arms and styling after the footwork, and repeats the whole thing from the top. To help you remember the choreography even further, Grimes gives each move a name that she can call out.

While I’m not sure that I’d pull out many of these moves in a club, they’re definitely “dancier” than those of other cardio dance workouts. Enough of them are doable the first time around, and enough of them are hard enough, either because of the arm work or because of their speed, that you can still grow into the program. Still, the most important thing is that the workout is *fun*. Grimes is sassy, teasing the male dancers in her group. The dancing requires your entire body, which makes it hard to sleepwalk through it. You’ll break a sweat, but the entire workout is short enough to fit in your schedule and leave you energized rather than tired. And, after doing the video twice, I find that I’m still looking forward to the next time.

Quickie Review: Marie Forleo’s Cardio Dance Blast

At first, Cardio Dance Blast seems pretty cheesy — the moves are a little silly, and Marie Forleo likes to give themed encouragements along the lines of, “You’re on the island, mon!”

Still, it’s very well-structured, and it’s perhaps that same cheesiness that makes it fun to work along with. Aside from an effective warm-up and cool-down, there are six dance segments. Each one starts with a simple move, builds on that with more moves, until you have a mini-choreography. You then do each move in the entire choreography twice, and finally, the whole choreo with only one rep of each move. Forleo always introduces the basic footwork, then adds stylizations like twists or hip bumps, then arm work, and finally chest or head stylizations. This is makes it easy to pick up the moves, and you can work at your level.

The variety of dancers/exercisers in the background is really nice. Some are more into the dancing, some have less athletic bodies, some do smaller or imperfect versions of the moves.

I tend to find cardio boring, but Cardio Dance Blast is a great way to stay mentally as well as physically engaged throughout a workout.

Review: Rania’s Belly Abs

Belly Abs is a great little video if you know what you’re getting. If you have some bellydance experience (from class or videos), if you already know proper dance posture and how to protect your back and knees when exercising, and want a quick dance-based workout that will drill combinations and target your abs, then this video will be perfect for you. The moves really do work the abdominals — you will feel it! — and a few sets of crunches add a little more exertion. The combinations are fun, fast, reasonably complex, and quite “dancey.” I could imagine using any of them, as is, while dancing to music. That said, they become increasingly difficult as the video progresses, so there’s some room to grow into the program. And the entire workout clocks in at 33 minutes, which is great if you want a quick burn and sweat.

If you have no bellydance experience, this is not the video for you unless you are gifted at picking up dance moves. Rania does break things down quickly during the video, but it’s really more as a reminder. Although she provides a small bonus segment called “ABCs of Bellydance,” this is really just an overview of the dance in general. There is no posture instruction. During the actual workout, she assumes you know how to tuck your abs, do mayas and camels, shimmy, and even suggests optional layering of shimmies.

The set is pretty but not distracting, the production values are professional, and the music is a steady but unobtrusive Middle Eastern beat. Rania herself is not the perky cheerleader type of instructor. She’s calm, funny, and seems relaxed and natural in this video (much more so than in her Natural Journeys videos). One small fault is that she uses the words “left” and “right” to refer to her left and right, so you have to adjust if you like to mirror the instructor. In addition, it’s not clear from the DVD copy that it’s not at all for beginners. However, the program is good value for the money, and really is intensely targeted on the abdominals.

Review: Suzanne Deason’s Yoga Conditioning for Weight Loss

Yoga Conditioning for Weight Loss spent some time gathering dust on my shelf before I finally tried it. When I finally did, I loved it, and this may well become my “go to” yoga video for busy days.

I happen not to like “flow” videos so much, and it seems most yoga DVDs out there are exactly about that. I love the feeling of breathing into a pose, and the challenge of using my muscles to maintain a strong pose for a little while. Yoga Conditioning for Weight Loss gives me just what I need: a good combination of standing, sitting, and lying poses; lots of twisting poses (which I’ve also found lacking in flow videos); a few poses which gently, but powerfully, build abdominal strength.

The video allows you to do the workout at different levels of modification, which means that you can measure yourself to someone at your level as you check your position. It’s hard to know if you’re doing a pose right if the only model you get a yoga master, or if the modified pose is somewhere behind the yoga master (hard to see on a small screen). Almost every breath is cued, which I also appreciate, and Deason keeps up a running commentary with advice on what you should be feeling and doing during each pose. Her voice is soft enough that you can ignore it if you wish, but I found her suggestions very useful for working on strength and balance, especially during standing poses.

And, the entire thing is only forty-five minutes long! It really fits into a busy day, and is wonderfully restorative. I’m not sure what it does for weight loss, but I can tell you that I feel physically good after doing the video, with just the right combination of energy and pleasant fatigue.