Product Description Get a tight, toned and elegant body with this effective ballet-inspired total-body workout from Mary Helen Bowers. With her 10 years of dancing in the New York City Ballet AND personally training Natalie Portman in her Academy Award-winning role in 'Black Swan', her expertise is unmatched. Sculpt sleep and strong legs, arms butt, abs, and upper body. Shape a lean and graceful dance'rs body with targeted mat work and standing exercises that lenghten and tone. Workouts include focused exercises that target trouble areas while increasing flexibility and improving posture. Includes: Bridge Series: A challenging series of bridge exercises that sculpt and tone the muscles on the inside and back of the legs, butt, inner thighs, hips, and abs. Abs: A targeted abdominal workout that strengthens your center of balance and sculpts a lean waist. Inner Thigh: Focused exercises that strengthen and tone the inner thighs, key to sculpting a ballerina's long, powerful legs. Outer Thigh: A transformative workout for the outside of the hip and thigh. These exercises tighten and tone the outer hip, lengthening the line of the legs. Arms: Upper-body and arm exercises that quickly sculpt and tone the arms, shoulders, and back and improve posture without any weights or equipment! Standing: Dance-inspired standing exercises with cardio elements. .com Ever wonder how those dancers get and keep such long, lean, taut physiques? Now you too can learn some killer moves to get you in shape like prima ballerinas. Mary Helen Bowers's Ballet Beautiful: Total Body Workout will work your buns, abs, legs, and arms--and throw in some fantastic cardio to help burn calories and balance moves to build your grace. Bowers is the famous trainer who worked with Natalie Portman on Black Swan, as well as with lots of other celebrities. And it's easy to see why: these moves can work for beginners (though trust me, you will feel the burn) as well as advanced fitness buffs wanting to kick things up a notch. The abs and arms portions of Total Body Workout, especially, are designed to show results fairly quickly. And don't be surprised if you find your balance and posture improving too. Total Body Workout will give you dancerlike sleekness and grace, no toe shoes required. --A.T. Hurley
H**S
For Girly-Girls Who Are Tired Of Being Yelled At By Trainers
UPDATE 8/23/2015: Well girls, it's been around 4 or 5 months, and my body looks AMAZING. I have not only lost weight that everybody around me has noticed, but I have gained long, elegant, and feminine lines from my arms, to my spine, over the hips, legs, you name it, they have all changed for the better. My fiance told me that I look absolutely gorgeous, retaining my curves with no nasty bulk and keeping the flubber away. My waist has been dramatically shrunken, exaggerating my curves beautifully. I just love looking at myself in the mirror, knowing all my hard work has been paid off. I want to try her streaming online videos next, especially her 15-minute ab workout that you can only access through her website- although the DVDs have done an awesome job for my mid-section, I am still prone to feeling a certain softness on my belly, and I want to REALLY flatten it before my wedding. My advice for everyone is this: Keep the rotations random and fun, don't just stay stuck doing the same DVDs over and over again, switch them around and 'shock' your metabolism by doing different workouts, as well as trying her other videos on her website. I even found YouTube videos of her doing very short workouts that lasts only a few minutes, and there were like around 6 videos in total (Channel is called NET-A-PORTER), resulting in a total of 25 minutes of workouts for days where I just cannot do her longer workouts. Even her super short videos BURN my muscles, so please check them out! :-)Remember to eat well. Lean proteins, dark chocolates, complex carbohydrates, tons of water, healthy fats, cooking and packing your own snacks and meals before going to work or school, fruits, vegetables, fish... you know the drill. Eat as many organic stuff as you possibly can and try to severely cut down (or even permanently cut out) processed meals! If you do this, and her workouts, honey, you are on your way to becoming a beautiful ballerina yourself!Oh, and before I forget... you will NOT believe me, but after months of doing her workouts, I am finding myself doing very ballerina-like activities, such as being able to kick my leg very high in the air, going on my tippy-toes without any problems, and practicing foot work whenever I'm bored. I could sign up for real ballerina classes if I want to! Heck, why not?ORIGINAL REVIEW: So, I'm a slightly overweight girl, right? Have been a bit soft around the edges ever since I graduated from high school, when suddenly my "skinny girl" genes went haywire and I suffered the college 15 and piled on the pounds as life went on. I have tried the Beachbody's P90x, found that way too hardcore for me, then moved on to a more forgiving Slim In 6. I still found it way too hard to keep going. I also found their programs, along with the gym culture in general, is hypermasculine, with people screaming in your face and wanting to be muscular even if you are a woman. I can't even go to the local gym anymore without some amazon woman with huge guns smirking at me, as if saying, "You need start lifting, honey. Be strong like the boys!"Now don't get me wrong, it is awesome that there are female bodybuilders out there who work out very hard for their muscles. It's just.... not for me. I'm a really feminine woman, deep down. I like romantic movies. I cry when people are rude to me. I like dresses and skirts more so than pants and jeans. Packing on the muscles and bulk would just look strange, for someone as sensitive as I. Gosh, I hope I don't sound offensive, but it's true! So, I helplessly searched around, for ways to lose weight, firm up, and slim down, without the awkward bulk I got from P90x and other crazy workouts. Along came Mary Helen Bowers, and the rest was history!This is the classic one hour workout. It has the bridge series, abs series, inner thigh series, outer thigh series, arm series, and a light cardio standing series. I love doing this workout at least a few times a week for serious sculpting and toning. It burns my muscles like you would not believe, and the crazy part is that I've been using this product for close to three months before reviewing this... and it still burns! It's a very challenging but motivational workout. To be frank, this is definitely more of a strength/resistance training, in that you may not see the scale go down in your favor (in fact, your weight may go up, because you are building some muscle weight) but it will seriously tone you up, make you firm, make you smaller and thinner everywhere, from your legs, arms, mid-section, and so on. So don't be afraid of the weight thing; ignore the scale if you must, at least for the first few weeks.I love how Mary Helen Bowers talks to me in a soothing voice, rather than the typical gymrat screaming and being hyperactive. Mary is poised, elegant, feminine, and kind. To a romantic such as myself, she is a refreshing change. Maybe I don't have what it takes to become a bodybuilder, but I do have what it takes to sculpt a beautiful dancer body. She has helped me create a better posture and make me proud to be a woman... and really, what is wrong with femininity? Nothing, that's what, and with this program, she will help you embrace your curve while taking away the chunky blubber, the cellulite, and any awkward bulges. I have an hourglass figure, so I appreciate the shape, I just don't appreciate the extra fluff. I wanna be a tight, lithe hourglass, you know?Thank you, Mary!
M**
BB always Lovely, Tough, and Tranquil. (Old and new releases compared below.)
I love the Ballet Beautiful workouts! They are as tranquil as they are tough. I love the bright white set and the classical music background. I love that MHB speaks gently to motivate instead of getting bossy like "bootcamp" style instructors. Overall the Ballet Beautiful workouts are some of my smartest fitness purchases.You may have noted that there are two releases each for the two workouts (Ballet Beautiful Body Blasts and Ballet Beautiful Total Body Workout). I have both, and I would love to compare for you the differences between the Original releases (with the mostly white covers) and the newer mass market releases (with these covers trimmed with green or purple). The actual workouts are the same, but a few features are different.In the new version you suffer through not one but two copyright warnings/; one from Lionsgate and one from Ballet Beautiful. The new discs open with the Lionsgate warnings and then the Lionsgate intro (the one with the turning cogs that tends to remind me of previews a the theatre). No previews to suffer through first. Then it shifts and plays the full preliminary faze in from the original. So, it sadly takes a few extra seconds to actually get TO the workout.Menus LOOK different, and have two notable differences: programmability and sound options. Each menu is, in appearance, similar to it's case. The new ones show that ugly band of color (purple or green, depending on which) that's on the cover on the menu. The new menus are busy, unattractive, and inelegant. BUT, they are more functional! The new discs allow you to set up your workout similar to the 10 MS discs. If you choose "custom" you can select which of the segments you would like to do, in which order you want them, then play through. With the original discs you either "play all" or return to the menu after each segment. Sounds options are different. Each gives you a different option. The originals gives you the option to workout with or without music, but with either option you will be listening to MHB. The new ones offer the opposite option: you can turn MHB's voice off or on, but in either option you are listening to the music.The new option includes Lionsgate trailers on the disc menu (but you only have to watch if you click on that option, which, being an exercise nerd, I did).Also, there is a difference in cases. The originals had full plastic (not so environmentally friendly but far more protective) cases. The new ones have the cases that have become the norm: the ones with the cut outs in the plastic. Both are pressed discs.I was rather torn as to which set I prefer. I much prefer the cover art (both front and back) of the original, but the more functional menu on the new ones swayed me. I like being able to not go back to the main menu when I want to do only 2 or 3 segments. And, I felt I was more likely to use the "music only" option than the "voice only" option (in all honesty, I'm not likely to use either option).
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