Alpharetta Barre, Essentrics and Pilates Club

Why Barre is so Dang Good for You

I took my first Barre Class in 2013.  I loved it from the beginning and how challenging it was, yet easy on your joints and body.  To me, barre is a great addition to EVERY BODY – young old, male, female, new to exercise, exercising for years.  It is always challenging the way it works all the inner connected muscles in your legs.

Barre is NOT ballet.  Lottie Berk, the founder of barre was a dancer, more contemporary than ballet.  Barre is something dancers, not necessarily ballet dancers, do to strengthen their bodies to dance.  It was initially named barre from Eliszbeth Halfpapp, her and her husband Fred DeVito, started Core Barre Fit. and Exhale studio where I was trained in Barre.  It is called Barre because it uses a bar on the wall.  In an ideal world, we would all be able to use a bar on the wall, but we make do with a chair for most of my classes.

Barre is designed to be done everyday, but once or twice a week would also be perfect.  Here are the benefits to doing barre regulary:

You build Serious Leg Strength. 

In my Barre classes I always do the same sequence of exercises – front of the thigh, back of the thigh, side of the thigh, front of the thigh, and hamstrings.  It usually takes about 25-30 minutes.  By the end your legs might be a little shaky, in the beginning you might feel it the next day.  But what makes Barre special, is that you will (or should) always feel the workout.  Sometimes when you do a lot of squats and lunges your body will get used to the movement, you will have to do a lot or add weight to feel your legs.  With barre, you use your inner connected smaller muscles in tandem with the larger muscles.  Your legs build together causing more stability and strength.  Pound for pound,  dancers have much more strength than even body builders.  And I think it is due to working your smaller muscles and working with Strength and Flexibility.

It is Easy on your Joints, but Effective for Your Muscles

Lets face it, as we age who wants to feel joint pain, not I.  I want to instead strengthen my joints and bone density and muscles.  Barre is perfect for that.  When you work one leg, you are working the muscles, and then the leg you are balancing on, you work bone density.  Think about how dancers move, they want to be able to balance and dance on one leg, in order to do this, you need to have strong muscles and strong joints.  This will benefit not just for dancing, but for everyday life living.

Barre Builds Your Core

One of my favorite sayings in class is strong core, strong body.  You truly need a strong core to have a strong body.  Barre can do that.  In the Original Barre Method, taught by Lottie Berk in London, she actually devoted almost half her class to building the core by doing abdominal exercises.  She used a bar to work the abs.  In a perfect world, you would use the bar for abs, but since my classes don’t have one, we make due with an abdominal floor section.  Also by doing the leg portion of the class you do work the core too with balance.

Barre Builds Posture

It is all about the alignment.  I am always telling my classes, ears, shoulders, hips.  Get yourself in alignment to not only do the exercises properly, but to realize and build alignment in your body.  The more you do something, the more you practice, the more you eventually make it apart of your lifestyle.  An aligned body is strong and unshakable, like a straight tree, but an unaligned body can easily fall over, think of a leaning tree in a storm.

 

Here is my Quick Standing Barre Class you can take on YouTube:

 

 

 

 

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