Secrets to a Taylor Swift body
What do the Victoria’s Secrets Angels, Rosie Huntingdon – Whitely, Taylor Swift, and Natalie Portman all have in common? Well aside from gorgeous faces, high profile jobs, and eye watering bank balances the answer is fantastically sculpted bodies.
With the recent, much documented Angels catwalk show having just passed it was interesting, not to mention relieving, to read how much work these ladies put into looking incredible. From clean eating diet plans to 7 day a week training regimes the preparation is not for the faint hearted. Yes these long legged beauties may have been given an unfair portion of the ‘good gene’ but they still have to work hard, very hard, to look as they do.
Coming round from my food coma post Christmas and having read every celeb diet plan the lifestyle mags could throw at me, I decided my New Years Resolution would be to try the one class that all of the aforementioned celebs seemed to swear by: BALLET BARRE.
Ballet barre class promises to help create a dancers physique using basic ballet skills and strength building exercises both at the barre and on the studio floor to create a long, lean, toned body, on top of improving balance, core stability and flexibility. I managed to find a local class and hauled my newly sculpted mince pie booty in to Frame Shoreditch to try it for myself.
The class I took, taught by Nathalie Desmier, started with a simple enough cardio warm up and swiftly moved across to the barre. Thankfully despite my pre-conceived perceptions, it is not mandatory to be able to fling your leg above your head on the first go – the class is open to all abilities – and there was not a tutu in sight.
We spent the following 35 minutes at the barre working through a variety of leg raises, stretches, body bends and crunches whilst moving between second, fifth and derrière positions (don’t panic they will explain what that means.) The main emphasis was on the extension of your hamstring to create long lean muscle in the leg whilst holding your posture using your core. We used a number of extra apparatus including small weights, Pilates straps, and Pilates ball to work our muscles that little bit harder. Class finished with a series of stretches and everybody commented on how they had found themselves to be more flexible than they had realised.
Over the next couple of days I noted that I walked taller, held my posture correctly and had the insane muscle aches that can mean only one thing; you had a great work out.
Whilst it may be a little longer before I grace the Victoria’s Secrets catwalk, I have certainly found my workout for 2015.
Barre classes can be found all over London and vary in price. I tried Frame’s:
by Carolyn Owlett
Check out what Harpers Bazaar says about this new ballet fitness rage: http://www.harpersbazaar.co.uk/beauty/fitness-wellbeing/best-ballet-barre-fitness-classes
Check our our survival guide to staying dry this January: https://onin.london/how-to-survive-dry-january/
Ballet not for you? Then read our Hot Yoga review: https://onin.london/fierce-grace-hot-yoga-review/
