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On a sunny Sunday morning, I went to my first ballet class. But this wasn’t the kind of class that required me to squeeze into a pair of leggings and pray to the fitness gods that I wouldn’t embarrass myself in front of a group of strangers. This was Class on Stage, a rare opportunity to watch dancers from the National Ballet of Canada warm up during their daily 75-minute class at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.

I knew I would be impressed by the physicality of dance. Elite athletes aren’t born, they’re made, and I was paying to watch this from a comfortable padded seat in a beautiful theater. Ballet without sets, costumes, and staging, without spectacle, is a room full of people training and continuing to train every day. Even before class begins, amid a sea of ​​resistance bands, foam rollers, and water bottles, the dancers are nonchalantly stretching their bodies in ways most of us wouldn’t even dream of. I shift uncomfortably in my seat, remembering the time I strained my back getting up from the couch.

Artistic director Hope Muir leads the course, which begins with Plie, This is a bending of the knees. The dancers stretch their legs with tenduCircle pointed feet with round postand elegantly raise their arms in Port de Bras. Assemblé, Dégagé, Relevé. This is more than an instruction manual. It is a language.

After about 45 minutes, the dancers don’t even look tired. Now the work on the barre is over and the floor is free. While it was almost meditatively calming to watch the dancers do pliés in unison in a calm and controlled manner, watching the floor exercises that followed was anything but.

As someone who is still somewhat traumatized by a serious injury I sustained while walking a few years ago, all this jumping makes me nervous. And while my accident was partly bad luck, I can’t help but wonder if these dancers, who seem to have a different relationship to gravity, could have avoided the fall altogether. As I watch their Petit and Grand Allegro for the next half hour, I am convinced. It’s as if they’ve learned to fly.

The sequences are short but progressively more complicated, so I stop paying attention to the instructions I can’t follow and just allow myself to observe the remarkable results. At the end of the class, I applaud and watch the dancers leave the stage. They have already accomplished so much that day and I am completely impressed, not only by my inadequacy but also by their effort.

As I trudged down the steps to the subway, I tried to remember the last time in my life I’d worked as hard as those dancers. Technology has made so many things easier: I can listen to any song I want, whenever I want. I can have pretty much anything delivered to me. I can stay in touch with friends without having to make time to meet them. But instead of taking shortcuts, maybe I should look for challenges. Because once you start doing difficult things, they get easier, and then you know you can do them. Until one day you’re at the end of a ballet warm-up and you’ve barely broken a sweat.

With the determination and discipline of ballet dancers still fresh in my mind, I resolve to do some difficult things: I buy a copy of a notoriously difficult book I’ve always wanted to read and turn to the first page, dictionary in hand. I practice a language I’m trying to learn again. I lift heavier weights. I take the stairs. I write that essay.

Nothing demands more from me than what ballet demands of these dancers every day. I think about their training, their ritual, and I feel inspired to do more. So I guess what I’m saying is that sometimes a fitness class can change your life, even if you’re not the one taking it.

Florence McCambridge lives in Toronto.