Ariana Grande Was Really Out of Breath Singing and SoulCycling

Last night at the VMAs, Ariana Grande opened her performance while bobbing on a SoulCycle bike. The workout was pretty standard, except instead of a yelling instructor we had a belting, stiletto-clad Ariana in the middle of Madison Square Garden.

She kept up the high intensity cardio for a solid 45 seconds, being sure to work off that donut, and once she dismounted the bike, she was noticeably winded. She then walked it off, kept up her heart rate with a bicep curl and a weighted squat, and mounted the pommel horse before regaining her breath.

Ariana is used to dancing and singing simultaneously. But could this switch-up in choreography keep her from hitting those notes full-throttle? “Absolutely, there’s no doubt about that in my mind,” Justin Stoney, Founder and President of New York Vocal Coaching, tells Yahoo Beauty. “Some of the notes she kind of pushed with a little breath, which is not what you want to do as a pop singer. You want to have a very small, controlled breath stream. And it’s very hard to keep that controlled breath stream when one is out of breath, so it’s a big challenge for her.”

The whole point of SoulCycle is to maximize cardio intensity, and Grande took a risk including it in her choreography. Stoney says the dance is designed to give Grande a few seconds to catch her breath, and since most of her live performances are less athletic, this is more than what she’s used to.

As you can imagine, training to sing and dance simultaneously is grueling, particularly for performers with rigorous choreography like Broadway actors. “A dancer’s going to have to do cardio in addition to their dance training if they’re going to sing on stage,” says Stoney. “A dancer could theoretically be running out of breath and do the dance routine well, but if they have to sing as well, they’re going to have to be in extra cardiovascular shape… One has to learn to sing while out of breath — that’s its own skill. In fact, Beyonce’s father used to make her do that. He made her run and sing.”

Stoney’s students are advised to sing while jogging, and part of his vocal coaching includes running up four flights of stairs before practicing a song. (Maybe Ariana should have sung along in her SoulCycle classes leading up to the performance?)

Grande may have lost her breath a bit, but belting out high notes in front of a crowd is undoubtedly exhausting, with or without the SoulCycle workout. “In a live performance like that, we can be a little bit forgiving given what we see her doing up there,” says Stoney. “You’re amazed at just the fact that she would do it. You’re kind of thinking less about the fact that she’s running out of breath and more about the feat itself. So I think even though you can see the seams, it was still overall a success.“

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