British Military Fitness (BMF), one of the UK's largest military-style fitness providers, has joined forces with English National Ballet (ENB) in a bid to ensure members continue to benefit from fresh training methods.

The partnership has been established to help BMF improve training sessions for more than 13,000 members by incorporating expertise from health and exercise methods at the ENB, which focus on core stability, balance, flexibility and posture.

It is hoped that ENB will also benefit from BMF training methods as part of an ongoing reciprocal agreement that will see the two organisations continue to work together in order to share experience and knowledge.

Joshua McSherry-Gray, dancer with ENB, said: "In ballet we start our day at the barre gradually warming up our bodies, it's not till about 30 minutes in that we start work in the centre jumping and getting out of breath. It's a totally different kind of workout with more detailed muscle work, BMF is about going for it and doing as much as you can."

Simon Richman, BMF's London area manager, added: "The challenge will give our instructors new ideas for exercises that can be transferred into sessions, making sure that our members benefit from our expertise as well as other fitness experts in different fields. We can learn a lot from ENB."

Image: Chris Harding