Dance Legs

Ahh, the legs. Those marvellous stilts upon which we totter around, those pegs which are celebrated in paintings and porn; those poor things that are supposed to be sculpted out of creamy marble, waxed smooth, and bronzed to a lustrous sheen.

Ha! It’ll be a frosty day in hell before a waxing strip or a tanning bed comes close to my thighs, but I will boast to you all that I’ve got a lovely set of legs. What’s more, I only partially have genetics to thank for that.

I’ve got fabulous legs because, to be blunt, I need them to be that way for dance. It isn’t the need to have a lovely, well-shaped leg peeking out of the slit in my chiffon skirt that drives me to work on them. A dancer must have powerful legs if they: expect to have a smooth and effortless shimmy, wish to glide across the stage in relevé for five straight minutes, to do flawless standing-to-crouching-and-back level changes, or to (may the gods have mercy) draw themselves out of that Turkish Fold as though lifted by strings. These things take raw lower-body power, girls, and more than just a small amount of it.
So what sort of things should a belly dancer do in addition to her regular practice to whip those legs – and by extension, the glutes - into shape?

Well, you could follow Arnold’s example:


Arnold Schwarzenegger Legs Training - Watch the best video clips here

I, however, am both lazy and very selfish with my time. Thus, I have no intention on slaving away at a gym when I could slave away in the comfort of my own home with the company of my husband and his computer game related antics. So here is a series of targeted leg strength moves I use:

1. Bulgarian Split Squats
There are loads of squats you can do, from your regular standing squat where you move up and down, to you junior-high gymclass nightmare squat where you hold your back against the wall and come down to a sitting-in-a-chair position, and many, many more. I don’t usually do these squats. My personal favourite is the Bulgarian Split Squat.

This move is the granddaddy of all my leg workouts. They will blast your quads and glutes into shape like nothing else. First, find a couch, chair, bench, or something sturty of around seat-height. Stand with it behind you, close enough that you can rest one foot on it with your instep resting against the seat and your raised leg bent 90 degrees at the knee. Your supporting leg should be slightly in front of your body so that when you squat down it also bends at a 90 degree angle at the knee. To do the squat, bend until your front leg forms that 90 degree angle, then straighten back up. Do not bend your back. Do 3 sets of between 8 and 12 reps, depending on what you can handle.

For an easier squat, leave your arms by your sides or resting lightly on an object to help with your balance. When I first started doing these, I needed to use a dresser for balance, otherwise I’d fall over. To increase the strength workout, place your hands on top of your head (keeping your balance, of course!). To go even further, hold a pair of dumbbells/free-weights at your hips or – if you have one – a weight bar across your shoulders. To really pump things up, do the squats slowly: 3 counts down, hold for 2 counts, 3 counts up.

Here are some handy-dandy illustrations, courtesy of the Men’s Health website:
Bulgarian Split Squats Explained.

2. Pliés and relevés
These are a basic mainstay for dance training for a good reason. They work your quads like squats, but with proper posture and non-exaggerated turnout, also work the complex clot of muscles around your hips, glutes, inner thighs, and as an added bonus, your calves.

If you are uncertain what a plié or relevé is, check out the following website and video. It gives a pretty good run-down and demonstration of the move:
A Dancer’s Legs.

Lots of benefit can be gained from practicing pliés and relevés with varying stance widths. Widening your stance from heels together to shoulder width, to one-and-a-half shoulder widths and completing sets of repetitions in each is very beneficial and will target different areas in your leg. Always maintain correct posture: glutes and abs strong and engaged, back straight, shoulders down, knees bending over the centre of the toes. Like the squats, you can increase the difficulty of the move by changing arm positions, adding hand weights, and slowing down the movement.

3. Cycling
Okay, so this isn’t an at-home type of exercise. But part of the reason why I love it is that it turns my daily commute into a great cardio and leg-targeted workout.* Multitasking commutes and workouts is fantastic, and due to traffic I actually get to work faster by cycling than by driving.** Plus, it doesn’t involve going to the gym, unless you cycle there, and there’s a whole lot of people with an bike rusting away in their garage, lamenting its lack of use.

4. Sitting to Kneeling Rises

There must be a better name for these, but I don’t know what it is. Essentially, you start by kneeling on the floor with your legs spread apart a bit and sitting on your heels. Then, with your back very straight and still and your arms out at shoulder level, you rise from sitting to kneeling, then lower back down again. Do this slowly, and do it many, many times. This is the single best move to building up enough strength to lower into and rise out of Turkish Folds.

Once you build up some strength, you can change from lowering into a sitting position to holding your back in line with your hips, and your hips in line with your knees, and lowering your entire torso into a backwards lean (like a plank that’s hinged to the floor), and then rising up out of it. If you have knee problems, be very careful – there is no pretending that this isn’t hard on the knees.

So there you have it: a toolkit to lead you towards marble-sculpted legs and improved strength for dance. Don’t forget to stretch afterwards, kids: it’s hard to shimmy when your hips and knees have fused to your femurs!


*Okay, I admit that I don’t cycle every day. If I have an appointment to run to after work or if I’m not feeling well I will drive in and walk the 8 blocks from the closest free parking spot to my office. Once the snow flies, that’ll be the end of cycling until the ice melts, so I’ll have to bus in earlier and make up for the lost exercise by going to the campus gym (membership fees are mandatory through our union dues, so I might as well use ‘em).

**I also feel as though I’m doing the morning commuters a favour by providing roadside entertainment. I’m a phenomenally clumsy cyclist and the results of my efforts are akin to a moving sideshow. I’ll tell you about it in a future post.

Pins and needles

I’ve survived my first acupuncture session.

In an effort to help my hypothyroidism and weird unidentifiable sciatica-like pain, I finally went and tried the procedure that I’ve been interested in for years but have been too chicken to try. It was actually quite pleasant, the needles don’t hurt unless they hit something really nasty; I’ve had more painful massage therapy sessions. My body felt pretty darn good throughout the whole procedure, although the sensations were definitely strange. As the treatment for hypothyroidism can be somewhat complicated and also involves dietary analysis, yesterday’s focus was on the odd line of pain I get down my left hamstring when I sit in office chairs.

This morning, my body was telling me a different story. Now maybe this is part of the whole process, but my leg has responded with great anger to the attempted treatment, and is sorer than ever. I remain hopeful that this is a normal aspect of acupuncture treatment, much like being sore the day after a good deep-tissue massage. But it ain’t fun, that’s for sure. Nor did the soreness and exhaustion help with my afternoon choreography practice, which means that I’ve got to do more choreo drilling at home. A solid practice and workout session is in the cards tonight, sore muscles be damned! Nothing seems to work quite as well for dealing with soreness than working it out.

Plus, to put it plainly, I need the dance practice more than I need to baby my muscles.
I’m curious to see what tomorrow will bring as far as the ramifications of acupuncture go. The next treatment session is on Monday, and will likely involve some thyroid work – I’m rather looking forward to the experience!

About Healthy Belly

We all wonder about our weight. We all wonder about our health. Even the most self-confident, self-possessed among us will spend a moment every now and then glancing in the mirror in personal admiration or dismay. The healthiest eater will look at their dinner plate and calculate if it is possible to make it just a little better. It takes work to become healthy, and it takes work to get healthy. Everyone has their moments of strength and moments of weakness.

It was with this in mind that I decided to create Healthy Belly. One day, after putzing around on a belly dancer’s forum for several unproductive minutes, I started looking for websites or blogs that offered fitness, conditioning, and general health articles geared towards belly dancers. Alas, as I suspected, there were very few and the quality in many of them was questionable. Soldering on, I widened my search to general women’s fitness websites. Most of the websites I found are atrocious. Like many of the women’s fitness magazines out there, they have a considerable focus on two things: your abs, and running.

Well quite frankly, there’s a hell of a lot more to being healthy then having a six-pack and working on your running form for the next half-marathon. I wanted to read about people who are trying new things, people who have found what works, people who experience set-backs and either keep plugging away or try something new. My personal health involves myriad issues, and not only do I want to read about it, I figured that other people would as well.
So I figured: I like writing, I like blathering on about dance and fitness and health and food. I know other people who have oodles of knowledge who could contribute to such a site. Why not start the blog myself instead of hunting around for one to read?

It also made sense that if I, as a belly dancer, wanted a website with information, resources, and blog entries geared towards my particular interests, than there were other belly dancers out there with the same desire. There are fantastic belly dance websites and resources out there, but I wanted mine to be more focused on the health, fitness, and wellness interests of the dance. Of course, there will be some other stuff tossed in there as well – strength training helps form and endurance, running helps cardio capabilities, and so on. I’m a big fan of cross-training, and so will address aspects of cross-training here.

Nutrition and food will be another big ticket item in Healthy Belly; obviously, proper diet and nutrition is key to overall health and affects a dancer’s performance capabilities. More importantly, though, I think there’s a lot of overly complicated and crappy info in regards to food, diet, and dieting out there. I love food, and I don’t believe that proper nutrition is as tricky for your average bear as many fitness resources say it is. So I’m eager to share nutrition advice, information, recipes, and even the occasional gloriously, sensually delicious high-calorie treat. Food should be enjoyed, and I hope that you enjoy it too.

With all that lovely altruistic intentions being laid out, I’ll also admit right here and now that there will be a good bit of navel-gazing going on in this blog. Perhaps my personal experiences and thoughts aren’t of much interest to others, but I enjoy slogging out the occasional rant and/or rave about my own efforts to be a Healthy Belly.

There will also be space in this blog for posts about healthy minds, and healthy spirits. If something related to beauty catches my eye or if there is a request for such a post, I’ll happily write about it – looking good helps people feel good. The same goes for having a healthy home and a healthy mind; our internal and external living spaces are not just important but integral for being the best dancers and the best people we can be.

I truly hope that it is not just belly dancers that find this site useful or entertaining. Healthy Belly has content that can help any woman – or man – with their own aspirations for wellness in their life and lifestyle.

So read on, belly dancers and honourary belly dancers! Leave your thoughts and comments, feel free to ask questions or forward contributions.