Barre Fitness Class Review | The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans LLC

0

The marathon is over.  I have taken a short break from any distance running.  My body has been so tired and my foot is still sore in one spot from the race and all the training.  Truthfully, I am trying to find the joy of running again.  I have seen glimpses of it here and there and I am positive it will return, but in the meantime, I am taking the opportunity to put my body through new workouts.

Like Barre Fitness.  Or Barre Fit.  Total Body Barre.  Barre Cardio. Or the other many, various variations of the barre class.

Have you heard of it?  B-A-R-R-E.  You might be wondering what the heck that is. Well, this is my Barre Fitness class review!

Barre Fitness™ is a one hour full body workout that fuses the best elements of ballet, pilates, sports conditioning and stretching for a truly unique and fun experience. The moves are low impact but high intensity intervals of strength training followed immediately by deep recovery stretching. This regimented routine will evenly sculpt and quickly transform the entire body, resulting in a toned, trim physique.

My local gym offers their version of a Barre Fit class. I have been eyeing it for a long while, but for some silly reason, I did not think I could squeeze it into my marathon training plan.  While the rational part of my brain knew I should have some type of strengthening exercise added to the running mix, I never made it happen for whatever reason. After attending today’s class, I know I was wrong NOT to include it in my training plan.

The Barre class is an excellent workout.

Classes can be up to one hour in length, although the class I went to was 45 minutes long.  45 minutes that included a warm-up, an upper body workout using low weights with lots of reps, and then a lower body workout using the barre, low weights and tons of repetitions.  There was lots of pointing up on toes and then squatting and then pulsing and then holding a pose.  There was a move where we straightened out our arms while holding onto the barre, balancing on one leg while doing leg extensions with the other leg, this way and that way….pulsing and holding, pointing and flexing.  All of this was set to fun, upbeat music.

My legs were a quivery mess.

I was a sweaty mess.

11 hours later, my quads and my bum are sore and I suspect they will be even sorer tomorrow.

I couldn’t believe how much I was sweating from a non-cardio workout.  I didn’t expect my legs to quiver, shake and burn like they did.  I couldn’t believe the number of women we packed into that fitness room to plie, squat, lunge, point, flex, and plank.

On a side note, prior to the class beginning, I told the instructor I was a newbie with a sore foot from running.  She recommended some modifications for me to give my foot more support- basically, wearing my tennis shoes while everyone else was barefoot- and not going full up on my toes for the exercises.  I took her recommendations, wearing my shoes the entire time and only partially raising up on my feet.  I was still able to complete the moves and get a good workout.

All in all, I highly recommend checking out a Barre class near you.  There are boutique gyms that only offer Barre, there are bigger gyms that offer their version of Barre, or you can go to Youtube and type in *Barre workout* for an at home video.

Have you tried a Barre class?  What did you think?

(Visited 892 times, 1 visits today)