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The Only 3 Moves You Need to Get a Dancer's Body

Strong, sculpted limbs in minutes a day? Yes, please. Here, the ballet-inspired workout for a long, lean body
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Tone Thighs With These Attitude Taps
What You'll Get: This leg tap exercise lengthens and tones the lower body muscles to help you get those long, lean ballerina legs . It also builds upper body strength, balance and coordination.

Here's How: Start by standing on the left leg on the center of your exercise band, holding both ends. Position your right leg (knee slightly bent) in a turned-out position. While keeping the leg turned out, lift it up into a front attitude, keeping it bent at a 90-degree angle (imagine you're balancing a glass of water on your knee). As the leg is lifted, your arms should be held out to the side as well, slightly lower than your shoulders. Lower the right attitude leg to tap the floor, lowering your arms in unison.

Do This Many: Complete 10-20 front attitude taps and 10-20 front attitude pulses (holding the leg in the attitude position and pulsing slightly upward), on each leg. Then, repeat with the leg held in attitude back, right and left.

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Add Pliés to Your Planks for Defined Abs
What You'll Get: This total body move takes the plank (a super-effective move for building core and upper body strength), and adds a dancer's plié to target the glutes, inner and outer thighs, hips and hamstrings.

Here's How: Place your feet against the wall, slightly turned out, and walk your hands out in front of you until you're in the standard plank position. For the plié, bend your knees and pull your hips back towards the wall. Push off the wall to extend back into your starting plank position. If you're really feeling ambitious, add a pushup when you're in plank position after each plié.

Do This Many: Do 2-3 sets of 15 plié planks, taking short rests in between.

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Diet Like a Dancer
When it comes to eating right, Kaiser -- who works with notoriously fit celebs like Shakira, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kelly Ripa -- emphasizes the importance of eating whole foods and drinking lots of water to promote long, lean muscles. "Stick to unprocessed foods without sugar and additives and preservatives," she says. "Whole grains, veggies and lean proteins are all going to help you."

Kaiser also recommends you cut yourself off from eating three hours before bed, and "stay away from sugar," she stresses. "It's more toxic than alcohol and four times more addictive than cocaine. Be wary of foods like skim milk, processed yogurt, workout recovery drinks and any type of bar," she says. These are some of the things we don't realize are high in sugar.

There's a reason the dancers you see on stage (or on TV shows like "So You Think You Can Dance") look so good: They work hard … like 12-hours-a-day hard. Since most of us don't have the time or desire to work up that kind of sweat, we talked to former New York City Ballet (NYCB) dancer Rachel Piskin and celebrity trainer Anna Kaiser of AKT In Motion to find out how us regular folk (you know, those not training for reality TV stardom) can get the body of a Balanchine muse -- in just three easy, do-anywhere moves a day.

BY MARISSA DESANTIS | JUL 25, 2014 | SHARES
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