For the past two months, I have been working towards my
certification as a BarreBody instructor. Sometimes when I write that, people
misread it as bare. No one is
actually bare, or even scantily clad, during this class. Sorry to disappoint.
BarreBody is based on ballet, Pilates and Yoga principles.
We use modern pop music and some movements that you might remember from
ballet class (tendus, plies, releves) but with an emphasis on safety and
technique.
In a regular ballet class, students normally warm up at the
barre, then progress to work in the center, and finally practice their turns,
leaps and choreography. In Barre class, we dispense with the leaps, turns and
choreography. Instead, we add in more strength and conditioning work.
The focus is always on technique, form, and injury
prevention. I think of it as training people for life (good posture, the
correct way to bend and pick things up off the floor, how to keep your knees,
hips, shoulders and neck happy for a functional life) rather than training them
to be dancers.
When my gym owner asked if I would substitute for the
current teacher of the class, I had not been taking the Barre class very long. Although
I have extensive dance experience, it had been about 12 years since I had taken
ballet with regularity. I have been swing dancing in the meantime.
While teaching swing dance, I have frequently wanted to find
a way to teach an ongoing “Conditioning for Dancers” class that would focus on
these very same principles barre does. I see things in my dance class that I want to work
on, like crooked posture and misalignment—or sometimes people ask me about preventing
knee pain. Barre addresses all these issues and works on developing the core
strength that is essential to any kind of dance, and to life in general.
In the course of the two months that I have been preparing
to teach this class, I have practiced my one-hour segment what seems like a
million times. I have physically done the exercises, counted along with the
music while I am driving (even saying the cues and calling out, “Up, Up, Up!”). My body has experienced an extreme dose of barre over the past eight weeks.
These are the changes I have seen in my own body:
1) Balance.
Although my static (standing still) balance has always been pretty good, it is
much better now. I have no problem holding a pose, even on one foot, while
other limbs are moving about. Since I practice without holding on to a barre
(so that I can stand in different parts of the room) I don’t need to hold onto
anything for balance anymore.
2) Inner thighs.
In the past, I have used adductor machines at the gym to tone my inner
thighs, and what I’ve gotten is chunky inner thighs that rub together when I
walk. Not what I was looking for. After eight weeks of intense barre, I can
feel clearly defined adductor (inner thigh) muscles.
They don’t take up any more space; I can just feel them under my
skin.
3) Seat. I feel
like everything around my butt feels better and stronger. I have, in the past,
experienced some hip pain, especially in my right leg. This is particularly bad
after I sit for a long time, like in meetings, movies, or in the car. My hips
have felt a lot better in the past eight weeks.
4) Piriformis.
The piriformis is a muscle under your glutes that rotates your femur outward.
My right piriformis has always been super-tight, which has translated into
rotating my right foot outward even when I don’t want to. That has caused some
knee pain, and it’s also a factor in the hip pain I mentioned before. Because
one of my cues in barre is, “Check and make sure all 10 toes are pointed
forward,” I have consistently checked that misalignment several times during
each workout. As a result, I am also more aware of that alignment when I do
other activities, like squats, walking and running. Overall, this has helped
balance out left and right sides, and I feel like the muscles that work against
the piriformis have grown stronger as a result.
5) Neck. As a
result of cueing, “Shoulders out of your neck/shoulder blades down and back,”
my always-troubled neck is really feeling pretty good here lately.
Barre is not the only workout I do. Wednesdays are my hard
workout day, where I run on the treadmill and lift. That day, I try to run as
fast as I personally can, slowly building up my endurance at a faster (for me)
speed. I am up to a mile and a half now. I also changed my lifting methodology.
Since barre focuses on low weights and endless reps, I use my Wednesdays to
lift weights heavy enough that I can only do one set of five with good form. On
Wednesday nights, I am always exhausted, and I sleep wonderfully well. As a result of the heavy lifting, I can now do
real pull-ups, which I never could do before. I am pretty excited about that!
I look forward to teaching Barre regularly now. I am excited
about getting to know my students and choreographing new routines. I really
think this program is a balanced workout that can improve quality of life and functionality,
as well as aesthetics, for a wide range of people (especially dancers!)
I will be teaching at FLY Fitness, 501 William St, Fredericksburg, VA 22904. Mondays at 9am, Tuesdays at 6:30pm, Fridays at 9:30am and Saturdays at 10:30am. http://www.flyfitnessinspiration.com
