July 28, 2013
Barre none: Athletes are ballet's latest converts
By DEIRDRE KELLY
The temperatures are soaring outside but on a recent weekday
morning, members of Synchro Swim Ontario have skipped the pool to stand
in ballet's first position in a stuffy room inside the Etobicoke
Olympium.
"Point and one-and-two-and-three-and-four!"
Shouting
out the counts is Jennifer Nichols, a lithe ballet dancer who has
pioneered the Extension Method, a workout regimen combining classical
dance technique with strength and cross training exercises using rubber
bands, free weights and complex movement sequences.
Today, she has
the swimmers lined up along a ballet barre doing rapid-fire foot drills
to build speed, extension and finesse in their leg work. Next, she
orders them to go centre floor to hold their balance on one foot.
"Ballet
is not just an art it's a sport," says Nichols, who dances with Opera
Atelier in Toronto in addition to running her own dance fitness studio,
Extension Room, located on Eastern Avenue.
"For these swimmers,
I'm adapting ballet technique to make it serve them in the pool. These
exercises will help them hold their core stable while their limbs are
doing extreme movements in the water and increase their range of
motion."
Ballet builds flexibility. It also builds strength,
speed, agility, balance, mental focus and endurance, which might explain
why ballet workouts are the latest fitness craze, benefitting elite
athletes but also those looking to add a little bounce to their exercise
regimes.
Barre-based fitness programs are popping up all over the
country and come wrapped in tutu-sounding names like Bar Method
(Vancouver), Barre Beautiful (Toronto) and Halifax Barre (Halifax and
Dartmouth). Toronto's Barreworks recently opened a second location in
response to growing demand for its body sculpting and cardio classes
using weights, balls and the ballet barre itself for building strength
and endurance. The popularity of the programs has been built on
high-profile success stories.
When NHL goaltender Ray Emery was
facing the premature end of his hockey career in 2010 as a result of a
debilitating health issue that required surgery to his hip, he took up
ballet. Less than a year later he was back playing as a member of the
Anaheim Ducks.
Mick Jagger credits ballet for enabling him, at age 70, to move, well, like Jagger.
In
a 2011 Brazilian documentary, World Heavyweight Champion Evander
Holyfield is seen doing pliés at the barre as part of his overall
fitness regime. "When I was fighting the big guys I needed to have
something that they didn't have," he explains. "These guys were bigger
so I had to have a game plan. And flexibility was the key."
Now, the benefits of ballet training have got amateurs ponying up to the barre. And they're not all women.
Toronto marathon runner Cory Pagett has been studying with Nichols for the past five years.
"This
has been of great help with the endurance aspect of long-distance
running," says Pagett, a marketing specialist. "The cardio portion of
the classes helps with heart strength, breath control and that
non-physical attribute, will power, when facing particularly gruelling
courses or hills which require me to dig deep for that extra amount of
drive."
At Vancouver's Barre Fitness, co-founder Ella Jotie is seeing a sharp increase in male clients.
"We've
recently been working with male soccer players, a professional lacrosse
player and competitive road cyclists," says Jotie. They've all told her
the exercise has helped build strength and heightened flexibility.
In Halifax, Laurissa Manning, who owns Halifax Barre, is presently training a male cyclist at her Dartmouth studios.
"Cyclists
don't often think to use ballet as part of their training, but it
definitely yields benefits," Manning says. "Ballet gives them heightened
stability."
Nichols' Extension Room ballet workouts use the
supporting apparatus of the ballet barre but, as in a real ballet class,
also uses the floor to test individual balance and poise. Participants
are also encouraged to jump, turn and do running leaps, or jetés, to
build stamina.
Nichols designed her workout to train basketball
players to jump higher, hockey players to skate better and soccer
players to execute quick lateral moves with a reduced risk of injury.
"Athletes," she says, "do not know how to really use the full potential
of the foot. Use of turnout and strength in the peroneals – the lateral
side of the calf – would also decrease ankle sprains when players land
from jumps by ensuring that the foot is trained not to roll over the
lateral edge."
The trend didn't come out of nowhere. Ballet as a
strength- and endurance-building regime has a long history: Originating
in the 16th century as an exclusively male pursuit, it was used to train
men in the arts of war – fencing, jousting and military discipline.
Even so, Nichols says she often encounters resistance when offering to train professional male athletes.
"They think ballet is effeminate and somehow beneath them," she observes.
"The
gender stereotypes are still so shockingly prevalent, despite the fact
that scientists and doctors are unanimous in stating that ballet dancers
are the fittest and most well rounded in existence," says Nichols.
"I have guys sometimes hovering by my door, wanting to come in and then chickening out," she says.
"But if they think ballet is for sissies, they are dead wrong."
Just ask Evander Holyfield.
The Globe and Mail, Inc.
Recital Coordinator(s):
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