To do a Squat properly you need to ground in your feet, butt back, chest up, sit back like you are sitting in a chair.  When you do a squat you work your quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves, some inner thighs, and some abs.   There are variations with feet together, wide stance, jump squats, squats with weights, single leg squats.

The First Position Barre Plie or V-Squat as I like to call it, is different.  Heels together, toes apart, lift up 2 inches, bend your knees, heels together.  You need to stand tall, keep your ears, shoulders, hips and heels into your alignment.  Straight up, straight down, knees are tracking over your toes.   Here you are also working the same muscles are the typical squat, but the difference is that your thighs are stretching long as you squat up and down.  Your core is also working more.

The Second Position Barr Plie, step wide, ground your feet, toes to the corners. Stand up tall, ears, shoulder, hips in alignment, back flat, open knees.  Bend knees straight up and down.  In addition, this Plie works those inner thighs extra specially.

All three exercises are great for your thighs, but the Barre Piles are, in my opinion, extra special. You can only do Plies so long before you feel them, Squats are much easier, maybe because we sit a lot and your body is more used to moving this way.

Here are some other reasons why Barre Plies work more effectively:

• First off, you need to hold in your core more to keep your body stable.  You work your core a whole lot more than the regular squat.
• You stretch your thighs more, making your thighs more slim instead of thick.
• By keeping your back straight, you build your posture more.
• You build more flexibility in your hips and joints.  Sitting makes up stiff in our hips, Plies open your hips up as you move as opposed to regular squats.
• The reason why Plies feel so much more difficult is because you actually are working more muscles.  All these little muscles in your hips and thighs.
• You build feet and ankle strength.  Being on your toes, works your feet and ankles.
• From all these reasons above, you end up burning more fat and calories than just doing regular squats.

Want to try these squats, here is a video that does these Plies: