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subscribe to beauty blog via RSSNew York’s Newest Ballet-Inspired Workout Bows
August 2, 2010 11:22 am
Brace yourself: Bar Method, the popular San Francisco-based ballet bar studio, has finally opened its first location in New York blocks away from rivals Physique 57 and Core Fusion. Like its counterparts, Bar Method is based on the teachings of Lotte Berk, a German dancer who combined ballet routines with rehabilitative therapy to create her famed exercise system in the thirties. With enough persistence, the technique promises to reshape and elongate muscles, sculpting that enviable dancer body build.
Bar Method’s 8,000-square-foot, airy, second-floor space on Spring Street is an inspiring place to work on that goal. A recent weekday morning class was filled with a mix of beginner (that’d be me) and intermediate students, all clad in stretchy yoga pants and padded socks. The one-hour routine worked our core with isometric movements and burned our muscles with intense interval training. The quad work in particular made me want to keel over, as the instructor told us to rise up on our toes, pull in our abs, square our hips, grasp the ballet bar with one hand, and then slowly pulse up and down for a count of infinity, it seemed. What separates Bar Method from its sister schools, according to co-owner Amy Duffey, is this emphasis on more subtle, but targeted moves and stretching throughout the routine. By elongating the ligaments when they’re warm and loose, she says it’s possible to increase flexibility, improve posture, and most importantly, pull the muscles close to the bone so the end result is a body that’s super lean and strong (read: no bulk!). Duffey recommends three to five classes a week for max results—a demanding schedule, no doubt, but if the payoff is looking like a ballerina in my bikini, I’m in.
Bar Method, 155 Spring Street, NYC, (212) 431-5720, www.barmethod.com
tags: Bar Method
