High Maintenance Mom

A few years ago I bought the The New York City Ballet Workout Book: Fifty Stretches and Exercises Anyone Can Do for a Strong, Graceful, and Sculpted Body. It's a beautiful book with beautiful dancers showing off exercises that look so natural it's easy to imagine that if you follow the book, you too will look so beautiful. Since I did ballet a long time ago, I have fond memories of taking classes and even fonder memories of having great posture and a great strength to weight ratio (I was also ten but we can pretend it was all because of the ballet). Although I exercise now, I do not stretch nearly enough and I've been looking for new ways to motivate myself to stretch. I'm not sure how I missed the DVDs (the New York City Ballet: Complete Workout 1 & 2 (2pc) is now available) but I happily bought them once I was aware of their existence. I have disk two with me on my trip and have to admit it's a higher quality DVD than disk one...

The exercises are easier to follow because the audio gives more information about the steps than disk one. Disk one, while a great workout, is more like a dance class where you already know the routine. It wasn't too hard to follow, but I could imagine someone who hadn't danced, or read the book, would have difficulty knowing what to do. One of the other exciting features of disk two is the ability to create your own workout. By clicking exercise sets, you can pick only the sets you want to do in the order you want to do them. This morning I did Reverence followed by Stretch followed by Reverence again. It was a great way to start the day. The music is relaxing and the exercises help increase flexibility and blood flow. I found myself smiling and sitting a little taller in my meetings today - at least for the first few hours.