Happy Thursday, everybody! (As you can see, my mood is rather better. Thanks, ballet!)

I am actually awake and have been awake for a couple of hours, amazingly enough, which is kind of a big deal for me. In short, I got to sleep at a decent hour last night (thanks again, ballet!), slept reasonably well, used the Oxford comma, and woke up around 7 AM today.

I have Way Too Much Stuff To Do today, but since I was sort of assuming I’d wake up around 9 and be fumbly and only quasi-functional until, say, 10:30 or so, I’m ahead of the curve. Seriously, I’ve even managed to eat some oatmeal and everything.

As such, it seems like a good day to do the ballet conditioning video workout thing, and maybe even make it all the way through.

When I made up my mind that A) some at-home physical conditioning was necessary (because wow ballet is demanding), and B) some guidance would help, I decided to order a copy of NYCB’s workout which, sadly, is not available as a download or for streaming (nooooo!).

Because I am an impatient and spoiled child of the digital age, I also bought streaming/download rights for one of the Ballet Beautiful Body series workouts (which are well-rated even though the name of the series makes it sound like all fluffy and non-serious). That particular video is called Ballet Beautiful Body Blast, hereafter to be known as BBBB.

It’s a good thing I did, because apparently I somehow failed to actually hit the “Shut Up And Take My Money” button for the NYCB set (seriously, there is no record of the order anywhere in my Amazon account; I checked about a week after I thought I placed my order).

Since then, things have been crazy, and I have not once managed to make it through more than 15 minutes of the BBBB, skipping around and doing different bits — but I have done enough to know that stuff is hard, yo.

It doesn’t look hard — but it is (hmm, kind of like ballet itself). Take the “swan arms” segment, for example: the part of me that spent ages doing competitive gymnastics initially looked at it and went, “Meh, she’s just waving her arms around. Eeeeeasy.”

Ha! Well, I ask you, when was the last time you spent 15 minutes gracefully flapping your arms while maintaining good form (with your belly zipped up and your core tight and all of that good stuff) and keeping your shoulders down and using muscles that you didn’t know you had (because, seriously, people don’t fly)? So, um, yeah. Way harder than it looks.

I am forced to admit that I couldn’t even make it through the core segment without reducing the counts and wanting to weep in desolation at my limp-noodly body. Made me realize exactly how much core strength I’ve lost (because I totally used to be that obnoxious people that can hook their knees over and feet under one of those double railing bars and just effortlessly hang out there, horizontal, as if reclining upon the air).

So today, before I do anything else, I plan to try to get through the whole of the BBBB (with much cursing and possibly some cheating by reducing counts) if it kills me.

And then I will do all the other stuff I need to do, because for all that I like to believe my life is entirely about ballet at the moment, I have non-ballet related responsibilites, like math homework and the dreaded bookkeeping.

So, yeah. I would offer to live-blog the whole Ballet Conditioning Video Workout Experience, only I can’t crunch and type at the same time. Instead, I’ll try to keep enough brain cells alive and working to write a review of the BBBB. Eventually, I will get around to really ordering the NYCB workout DVDs, and I’ll try to review those, too.

‘Til then, keep the bottom side down ^-^