Fitness Feature: Barre Beautiful

I’ve been wanting to try a Barre class for a while now but I was unsure where to start. Thanks to twitter, Living Lou gave me a fantastic recommendation to try out Barre Beautiful in Toronto. Lucky for me Amy joined me and boy was I thankful she was there. Amy is quickly becoming my fitness buddy and just an all around awesome friend. She is seriously inspiring and comes up with easy and delicious recipes for everyone. If you haven’t had a chance to check out her blog you definitely should!

Back to Barre. We signed up to do the Barre Sculpt and Tone class with Dave Cartmill. Normally I go into these things not knowing what to expect but in this case I had been warned that barre is hard. Thank you to everyone who warned me! You definitely did not lie. But it was hard in the best way. Even though my muscles were burning for just about the entire class, I had no doubt that the hard work I was putting in would yield results. No pain, no gain right?

Barre was developed in the 1970s by Lotte Berk and the basic idea was to combine dance –more specifically ballet– with traditional fitness moves. Most classes are performed using a ballet bar that is attached to the wall (source). In recent years it’s become quite popular and I know here in Toronto several studios have been popping up. 

The workout mainly targeted my legs and glutes but definitely incorporated some abs and upper-body exercises. A lot of the exercises were throwbacks to my old ballet days i.e. plies, first position etc…Some moves used small weighted balls (no more than 5 lbs) that when combined with high reps really fine tunes your muscles. Within 2 minutes of starting the class my legs were shaking! 

Here are some of the moves we performed:

All-in-all I LOVED the Barre class. Budget permitting it is definitely something I would like to incorporate more of in my workout schedule. Thank you to Barre Beautiful for having us and for letting Amy and I shamelessly take photos around your studio! I will definitely be back (without the camera next time ;)).

Have you ever done a Barre class? What was your experience like?