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[title]Hot dancers prove that New York dance classes are a great way to develop core strength and muscle tone. Megan Fairchild, a principal dancer in the New York City Ballet, embodies the traditional ballerina archetype—she’s graceful, slender and strong all at once.
RECOMMENDED: Fitness guide to NYC
How does dancing keep you fit?
It’s definitely a very disciplined thing to do; you don’t get to slack off and still succeed. Dancers develop strong calves to relevé and jump; we activate our deep external rotators under our butt to turn out; and we use our inner thighs and core muscles to stabilize.
What else does your fitness routine entail?
Lately, what I’ve been doing is yoga podcasts from a Southern California company called YogaGlo (yogaglo.com). They put all of their classes online, so you have a huge wealth of styles to chose from, and you can spend whatever amount of time you have available. Also, the biggest thing that dancers are really good about is that any way they exercise, they always stretch those muscles out. We never want to bulk up anywhere, so if we swim, we stretch our arms; if we bike, we stretch our quads and our butt; if we run, we stretch our quads, hamstrings and calves.
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