Alexis Ren’s Tips For The Best Ab Workout: Warrior Founder Shares Her Ballet-Inspired Moves
Alexis Ren revealed her favorite ballet-inspired ab workouts & spoke to HL about building her community of Warriors.
Dancing With The Stars alum and fitness queen Alexis Ren found new purpose when she searched for ways to foster true connection outside of social media. Warriors, a community founded and led by Alexis, offers mentorship, guidance, support and education to members with monthly challenges, weekly calls and more virtual events. For the month of March, the community is taking part in a 30-day fitness challenge, which incorporates Alexis’ 10 years of ballet training. “People always ask me how my body is shaped this way, and it’s ballet. It’s the most beneficial. It’s the structure of something really powerful,” she explained in an EXCLUSIVE interview with HollywoodLife.com. “I played with beginner ballet, and then added a little bit of Pilates, and then a little bit of yoga into this 30 day challenge that I created, so hat anytime we’re strengthening our muscles, we’re also elongating.”
“What’s so good about ballet is that I don’t really have to focus on on the floor ab workouts during these exercises, because your abs are working,” Alexis added. “As a ballerina, we never did sit-ups.”
- Stand in first position (heels together, toes out)
- Start with your right foot and with your toe pointed, tap it on the floor in front of you, then out to the side and then to the back.
- Next, keeping your right leg straight, raise it slightly in front of you, then out to the side, and then to the back.
- Finally, extend your right leg straight in front, bring it in to a passe (when one leg is bent so it looks like a triangle with the foot placed near the other leg’s knee), hold it for three counts, and down.
- Repeat on one side for a minute and then switch. Do five reps each side.
“Our balance is our core,” Alexis added. ” A lot of the times if you wonder, ‘Why aren’t this sit-ups doing anything?’ Try doing balancing exercises, and you can actually gauge what actual core muscles are being used. Your balance is a good indicator of how strong your core actually is.”
Alexis’ workout challenge for her Warriors community is not only about “getting in shape” or “losing weight,” she explained. “We pair these 30 minute a day workouts with our live calls with our dietitian, with a journal and with journal challenge on top of this, so we’re keeping ourselves accountable for mind and body throughout the whole month. So at the end, it’s like I’m here to transform my mindset, and then everything else will follow that exactly,” she said.
Alexis was inspired to launch the Warriors community after feeling admittedly “drained” from the “perfect storefront” that people put on their social media. “I remember feeling empty, and just I would have panic attacks. It was all through 2018 and 2019 and I was just like, I can’t do this anymore. This is so icky,” she admitted. “I was just continuing to look for avenues of sharing myself and knowing that eventually I was going to create my own platform for that, but I didn’t know how at the time.”
Now, Alexis has fostered a community of hundreds of girls, with ambassadors across the world, who all take part in weekly conversations, mostly lead by Alexis herself, about whatever they’re going through that week — whether it’s body dysmorphia, self-worth, their career aspirations, health concerns and more. “Ironically, a lot of it was the same stuff from the beginning. Self worth issues, not feeling enough body dysmorphia being scared to like truly be themselves for fear of rejection,” Alexis explained. “And all of this is coming from an internalized mirror where they’re just continually rejecting themselves. And I knew this from my own experience of just continually rejecting myself, giving myself hatred, being the hardest critic I could possibly be so that no one would be that for me.”
With the journal prompts, monthly challenges with varying themes, education seminars, workouts and more, Alexis Ren’s Warriors is a safe haven for young women constantly fighting against the unreachable and ever-changing beauty standards of the world. Check it out and find out how to join here!
