Just curious what everyone does for off-ice. I go to the gym 3-4x a week, and also do my stretches/practice spiral poses every night (well i try to) while watching tv. I'm also starting adult beginner ballet classes next week, i'm so excited! The Joffrey Ballet opened a new dance academy near my work in downtown Chicago, so it is convenient. I am quite nervous, as the last dance classes I took were back in college, 5-6 years ago.

If anyone is in an adult ballet class, please share your experiences as well and what to expect.

I took an adult ballet class a year ago, and it didn't go well for me, but if you get a nice teacher, it will probably be a lot of fun. I had a very strict teacher and found the whole thing very intimidating and stressful, but I never took ballet before, so maybe it is supposed to be that way. As for other off-ice, I run occasionally, and work out on an elliptical trainer for cardio training. I stretch my back and leg muscles every day, as well as do crunches for core strength. I find that I get really tight from skating, so the stretching each night is crucial to maintain my flexibility. If I am having jump trouble, I also work on off-ice jumps, but not too much, since it bothers my knees.

I do bikram (hot) yoga and it's amazing for helping with flexibility and overall posture. The room is heated to over 90 degrees, and that helps with stretching your muscles and it feels soooo good to sweat everything out!

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"Where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?"

I do reformers pilates (5 years) and ballet but I work on pointe work and issues dealing coordination and arms. I have also found the wii fit to be very helpful since it has you cross yoga moves the strength moves I do about 20-40 minutes of that 2x a week as well.

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Who me? Couldn't be....
http://www.youtube.com/bouldersk8r

I do a fitness program called "Turbulence Training" where you do mostly body-weight exercises and intervals (cardio) 3x a week; then I have belly-dance class 2x a week. That usually does it for me....of course i do yoga at home 2x a week and stretch (tight hamstrings). Once in a while I will do some off-ice jumping. Not too much tho cause I'm not good at it

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Skate@Delaware
Ah, show skating!!! I do it for the glitter!

We did adult ballet classes for beginners last year, and I really enjoyed it. It helped that the teachers were quite relaxed and understood that we were not very flexible adults, so weren't going to be able to do things very well. Admittedly the first teacher may have been a little bit too relaxed, and would say "that's great" even when I knew what I was doing was quite poor (though my mother was a ballet dancer, so I already had a good idea of what things were meant to look like!). Second teacher was also very friendly and helpful, though more picky about technique, but in a good way. I like that she was trying to assist us to get it right. Not sure if I'm going to go back this year as yet, however, as there was a bit of a revolving door of teachers and I was getting tired of the chopping and changing.

Anyway, it definitely did help me improve my extension (though it's still not great) and posture, and to think about arms a bit more, and also provided a decent workout.

I stretch. Sometimes. And I have this clever machine you push along the floor and let come back, and it tones up your tummy/core muscles. When I am really motivated, I do toning exercises, too.

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

I have taken both yoga and ballet classes, but ended up deciding that all I really wanted from either class was the stretching component. So I took the stretches that worked, got some other good ones from my physical therapist and developed my own stretching regimen, which I now do for 45 minutes at the rink after I'm done skating.
I did take ballet for a year or two when I was growing up, though, and I know it benefited me as far as posture and arm and leg positions. If you've never taken ballet, it's worthwhile to take it for awhile just to get the body positions in muscle memory.

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"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

I go to the gym about 3x a week (each time I'm doing cardio and some sort of strength training session.) I train with a personal trainer who is a fellow figure skater herself at my rink. We do a LOT of strength training with core, legs, upper body and stretching... A WHOLE LOTTA STRETCHING in fact!!!
Doubletoe (I think it's you...) know how much PAIN my personal trainer puts me thru just on the stretching at AN... LOL!!!

(And you know who I'm talking about and asking if she's going to AN this year... sadly the answer is no. She will be putting in about 13 units of school work this semester... EWWWW!!! )

Have no time unfortunately due to my new job and my financial circumstances to go to ballet or ANY dance classes now.

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Cheers,
jazzpants

11-04-2006: Shredded "Pre-Bronze FS for Life" Club Membership card!!!
Silver Moves is the next "Mission Impossible"
(Dare I try for Championship Adult Gold someday???)

Thank you for the support, you guys!!!

I have one of those too, I call it a vacuum cleaner!

But personally I do aerobics, weight lifting, in the summer bike riding. I did a stretching class for a while--waiting for that to restart in the spring.

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Great forum quotes:
On Falling: '...it doesn't matter, it's what you do AFTER you fall that's more important' ISK8NYC

Yes, I was just wondering if she was doing AN this year and sad to hear she is not. I didn't realize she was in school. What's she studying? Is she coming to PCAS?
Oh, and how is your sciatica? Doing this stretch seems to really help that area for me:

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"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

She's also not doing PCAS as well. She has 13 units this semester, which is full time student status.

She's studying at San Francisco State U. (my old alma mater, BTW) for her BS in Kinesiology (Exercise Science emphasis) She's planning to graduate in 2010. (A lot of personal trainers out there aim for this degree as part of their career growth.)

Read my last post on the Lesson/Practice thread for what happened this afternoon. Not good at all!!! I'm now resting my back and NOT doing a DARN thing 'til I get to my chiro!!! (Yes, I do that stretch as part of my cool down, BTW. Been doing that for years...)

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Cheers,
jazzpants

11-04-2006: Shredded "Pre-Bronze FS for Life" Club Membership card!!!
Silver Moves is the next "Mission Impossible"
(Dare I try for Championship Adult Gold someday???)

Thank you for the support, you guys!!!

Cool! Kinesiology is fascinating and she will definitely be an asset to anyone she works with! It sounds like you are doing all the right things and are in good hands. Hope you feel better soon!!

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"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

Yes, I always think I'd be far more motivated to use it if it swept the floor while it was at it!

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

i took ballet for 3 years as a kid but due to financial reasons i had to quit. i took it up again in college as a PE for 3 years, and then my senior year all my major classes conflicted with the schedule so I took jazz and tae kwon do instead. then of course after I started working full time I got lazy until I went back to skating (took 2 years of lessons in high school, had to quit because I was leaving for school). so this will be my first "open adult" ballet class. I just don't know quite what to expect and quite nervous because I won't know anyone there, unlike when I was in college. also having been diagnosed with RA, i gave up my dream of going back to take ballet (just for fun) because my knees were killing me when I try to bend them too much, much less be doing grand plies...to this day i can't do a shoot the duck, but my dips have gotten so much better (i used to do this weird butt sticking out position trying to go down lower), so i think the skating and regular workouts, as well as medication really helped although i did tell my coach that if ever i got to the sit spin, to not really expect much but i have been experimenting with practicing by our kitchen counter doing "barre work" including the darn grand plies and the knees are holding up fine, so I took the courageous step of signing up for ballet class.

my coach got excited when I told her yesterday.

I think you said earlier it's an adult beginner class? Generally these classes include barre work (including plies [sorry, I don't know how to do accents to be in proper French] in at least three positions, both demi and grand), learning how to do tendus and basic combos at the barre, and the floor work such as waltz steps and combinations. Depending on the level of the people in the class, it may be as basic as learning what a plie is and how to do it, or may be as avanced as quick-time combinations including leaps. But the teachers should generally be understanding if you have issues such as RA and tell them about it up front.

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"Without a struggle, there can be no progress" ~ Frederick Douglass