Welcome Fitness Blenders! It's Erica and I am honored to be guiding you through this Barre Basics series!
Rooted in ballet and its French-derived terminology, modern barre practice will often incorporate inspiration from other forms of movement such as dance, strength training, pilates, yoga, and more. It focuses greatly on posture and body awareness, muscular strength and endurance, coordination and balance, along with mobility. Due to its extra focus on detail and form, it recruits smaller stabilizer muscle groups and you'll also find an emphasis on smaller ranges of motion to maximize muscle usage.
Who is this series for?
This 5 day series introduces you to the fundamental movements, postures, and terminology of barre exercise. It was designed for the person either completely new to or somewhat familiar with barre who wants to gain a solid foundation and understanding of it. No worries if you don't have a dance background, don't feel you're coordinated, graceful, or anything else that may cause you to question your ability to participate. Please know that this was designed to be "barre basics" for a reason and welcomes many fitness levels and backgrounds!
Those who enjoy low-impact, high-intensity movement will surely enjoy the challenge of barre. It will also benefit those who have goals to improve balance, stability, posture, body awareness, total body coordination, muscular strength and endurance, and even mobility, especially in the ankles, hips, and shoulders.
What to expect
From days 1 to 5, this series builds upon itself, so it's important to complete it in chronological order. Day 1 will introduce common foot positioning, the natural vs. neutral spine, and foundational lower body movements. Day 2 will introduce arm positioning and common upper body movement patterns. Day 3 combines upper and lower body for the first time into a more cardio-intensive workout. Day 4 will focus more on the back side of the lower body when compared to day 1 (glutes and hamstrings). Day 5 is a total body focus while also debuting some isolated core work. Throughout all of these days, you'll learn new exercises and tips while continuing to practice what you've already learned. Repetition is the father of learning, as I'll remind you!
The length of workouts ranges from 35-41 minutes with the average workout being 38 minutes. One workout is rated a level 2 in difficulty, while all the others are a 3. Of course, barre is the signature training type with elements of balance, stability, coordination, strength, and cardio woven in. All workouts are low-impact.
Equipment needed
• A chair or countertop that comes to waist height (this will serve as your barre)
• Very light weights (between 1-5 lbs) - canned goods work great, too!
• Mat
These 3 pieces of equipment will be necessary to successfully participate in this series. The signature piece of equipment in barre is a wall-mounted ballet barre that comes to about waist height. For the majority of barre exercises, it's said that we treat our barre as a dance partner. It's there to help us balance but not there for us to fall into or heavily lean on. A chair or countertop that comes to waist height makes for a fantastic barre substitute as most of us don't have one installed on a wall in our home (myself included). You may also be wondering about the very light weights. Being that barre focuses on high repetition through smaller ranges of motion, there is no need for weights much heavier than this. One last thing to note is that barre is traditionally practiced without shoes on to help with balance. Feel free to go barefoot or have nonslip socks on!
By committing to the proper order and duration of this series, I know you're going to feel so much more knowledgeable, poised, and strong (in a new way) once it's complete! I can't wait to see you in the workouts.
xxErica