Why I’ve changed my mind about impact and other things…

If you’ve been a Groove Barre member for a while, you’ll know that I fell in love with the barre method because it was intensely hard and also low impact. My body was craving low impact after years of over exercising to try to overcome a bad diet. Weekend drinking and party foods were sabotaging my efforts in fitness as well as creating inflammation in my body. I was exhausted and not achieving the results I craved.

Once I figured out my diet, I could actually exercise for enjoyment. I loved the way barre and Pilates made my body feel. And as a fitness instructor, I loved that even with light weights, I could see muscle gains in both myself and my clients. Barre and Pilates offered a solution for women who were afraid to pick up heavier weights, because we could still get to muscle failure with high repetition.

Don’t get me wrong – I am still a huge fan of barre and Pilates, but as I’ve gotten stronger along with my clients. I’ve been looking for more.

Also, I’ve had a few friends and clients be diagnosed with Osteoporosis. As a personal trainer, I know that building muscle and having impact are the best ways to build bone density.

Do you need heavy weights to build muscle? No, but it depends on where you’re at. If you’re new to working out, you’ll most likely successfully build muscle in our barre classes. What’s necessary to build muscle is working to near failure. Note that near failure is different than discomfort. Discomfort might be that burny feeling you get in your legs in a barre class, but failure means that you literally couldn’t do another rep if you tried.

If you’ve been coming to barre class for a long time, you might be in maintenance mode. While this is still beneficial, it’s not going to get you stronger than you are today.

Our Bounce classes have been wildly successful and helped both me and clients take their cardiovascular fitness next level. If you’ve been doing Bounce classes for a while, you may no longer feel the cardio challenge of a barre class, so it’s time to up that challenge.

We’ve already started changing the way we train you. You may have noticed that in our classes (both open studio and reformer), we’ll do multiple sets of the same exercise. Why are we doing this? It’s to increase your workload and bring you closer to failure. In short, it’s to get you stronger.

Coming soon to our barre and reformer classes will be invitations to add some impact. What will this look like? Invites to add hops, jumps, jogs and stomps. As always, you’ll be invited to choose the option that works best for you. 

You may have also noticed we’ve got some new heavier weights around the studio. You are invited and encouraged to pick up something heavier!

If you’re no longer getting sore after your Groove Barre workouts, it’s time to pick up heavier weights and level up with our Shred classes.

We’ll be offering 2 new HIIT classes (high intensity interval training) that will help you improve your cardio performance and build muscle. 

Shred Upper and Shred Lower are designed to help you train your cardio capacity and build muscle strength in the most effective and efficient way possible.

We’ll be combining Tabata rounds of cardio and strength building. Tabata training has been shown to be more effective in improving cardio capacity and strength over devoting far more hours to moderate intensity workouts. 

These classes will be 35 minutes per week and sign ups will be limited to 1x per week of Shred Upper and Shred Lower.  

We’re the same Groove Barre, just stronger.

FAQs

Q. Why are you limiting it to 1x per week of each Shred Lower and Shred Upper?

A. We don’t want you to overtrain. These classes are very intense.

Q. I’m still getting sore after my other Groove Barre classes. Are these classes not for me?