For those of you who do not know Mary Helen is, she is the woman on the front of this DVD cover pictured below (click the icon to buy the DVD & sponsor this blog). She is also, the woman who whipped Natalie Portman into professional ballerina shape for her performance in Black Swan.
Some of you may have attempted to follow this robotic like chatter box through one of her workouts and found yourself barely walking the next day. For those of you (like me) who could not even survive the second set of exercises, I wanted to share with you a tactic I've found for how to actually survive this workout.
Step 1: Acknowledge that unless you are a professional ballerina or cross fit olympian, it is not wise to force yourself to push through one of her workouts cold turkey without any technical training.
Step 2: Break it down. For every exercise she repeats the movement in 4 sets of 8, below are three stages in which I recommend breaking down her workout into more manageable bites:
- Watch her do the first two sets, follow along for the second two. Once you are comfortable with the movements proceed to step two.
- Do the first two sets, rest and stretch for the second two. Once your body is loose, limber and easily articulating the movements, proceed to step three.
- Watch her do the first set, follow along for set 2 and 3, do a quick stretch during the fourth set.
Step 3: follow it up with a 20 minute yoga workout like one of these:
Random things to keep in mind:
- If you have / had carpal tunnel DO NOT attempt the first two exercises in her arm workout (doing this with the dvd just once, landed me back in a brace struggling to write with my left hand again).
- it is better to not do the movements, then to do them with improper form, these are not simple exercises. They are designed for people with incredibly tuned body awareness, alignment and articulation. If you feel any sort of pain when doing these exercises, I would recommend stopping immediately and consulting either a Feldenkrais practitioner or Gyrotonics instructor for lessons to develop these three a's.