Sports

The Barre Is Hopping

These increasingly popular exercise classes combine moves from ballet, yoga, pilates and boot camp.

Envision ballet mixed with pilates mixed with yoga mixed with boot camp. Enlist a barre, mats, straps and small weights. Throw in a soundtrack, a bit of choreography, and you have Barre3.

Prime for the exerciser with a short attention span, Barre3 gets people fit by mixing it up. The practice calls upon a number of disciplines and then builds strength by targeting muscles with short movements and long holds.

Barre3 is part of a fast-growing trend. It’s hard to ignore ads and daily deals for various barre classes around the Puget Sound area. Nationwide franchises Barre3, Bar Method, and Pure Barre all now have a local presence, and more locations are slated to open later this year.

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The trend is also true across the country. Barre enthusiasts attribute some of the techniques to Lotte Berk, a professional dancer who designed barre workouts in the 1950s. The movement attracted modern popularity after Burr Leonard and Mimi Fleischman opened the Bar Method studio in San Francisco, and the concept has been spreading to other gyms since.

Barre3 is relatively new to the Seattle area. Co-owners Heather Kass and Anna McEvers opened Barre3 studios in Bellevue and on Capitol Hill late last year. They plan to open a third location in the Issaquah Highlands in September. Barre3, a franchise that began in Portland in 2008, has 12 studios in the U.S.

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Kass and McEvers decided to invest in their own Barre3 studios after becoming hooked on barre workouts. Kass is a triathlete and McEvers dances and plays tennis, and both became convinced that barre sessions could help them develop and maintain the strong, lean muscles they desired.

Though McEvers was once a school teacher and Kass had owned a public-relations firm, the two Issaquah residents had been stay-at-home moms for years. Believing that there could be a strong market for Barre3 in the Puget Sound area, the two teamed up. They received training from Barre3 founder Sadie Lincoln, purchased the franchise rights, and opened the Bellevue studio last September. The studio attracted so many clients, McEvers and Kass decided to open a second location, on Capitol Hill, just three months later.  

Kass and McEvers try to make Barre3 family-friendly. Both studios offer childcare. At the Bellevue studio, many of the most popular classes take place mid-morning, after children have been dropped off at school. They think the Issaquah studio will also draw a large number of moms who want to exercise (and have disposable income).

“We see these women pushing strollers up hills all over the Issaquah Highlands,” Kass said. “Women love to work out there.”

Curious about the increasing lure of barre classes, I decided to give Barre3 a try . On a Thursday morning, I arrived at the Capitol Hill studio in the Trace Lofts building at 12th  Avenue and East Madison Street.

At the front desk, the receptionist asked if I’d tried a barre class before. When I told her no, she smiled and said, “You’ll be sore in all new places. You’ll love it.” Up until that moment, I’d envisioned an hour of stretching and gentle exercise at a barre. Perhaps I needed to reconsider my vision.

Indeed, the next hour proved to be a workout far more challenging than I’d expected. Barre3, I learned, wasn’t just about soothing stretches. During many of the activities, we held postures or completed short reps until my arms or legs started shaking.

Kass taught our class that morning, and brought her own athletic style to the room. She later told me that no two instructors or classes at Barre3 are the same. With her triathlon background, Kass prefers to lead a high-intensity boot camp-style class. Other teachers might call upon their dance, yoga or pilates training. And every instructor is told to vary the exercises in each class, so students don’t end up doing the same motions every session.

“We all bring our own personality to the classes,” Kass said. “My style is to push, push, push.”

That morning, our class had about a dozen students, and all but one were female. Kass said that gender ratio is fairly typical at their studios, as barre classes draw far more women. She believes, though, that the class is challenging enough for the strongest guy. When Kass’ basketball-playing boyfriend comes to class, she’ll work him to exhaustion with just 3-pound weights.

“There are no egos in our classroom,” Kass said. “We have hardcore Crossfit guys who come in here all confident, and we say, ‘Just wait. You’ll shake.’”
Kass opened the session with a brief choreographed cardio warmup of knee lifts and step taps. (Don’t worry if you aren’t adept at choreography--I am not a dancer by any means, and even I was able to follow along. And this section of class is extremely short, and only intended to get the blood going.)

After the warmup, all Barre3 classes follow the same basic structure: push-ups, legs, hips and glutes, and core. We started with push-ups on the barre, holding the position halfway down and then moving our arms up and down just 1 inch. As Kass promised, my arms were shaking by the end of the series.

The following segments of class, each targeting a different muscle group, featured the same excruciating small movements and holds. We did wide squats, narrow squats, and chair sits. Lying  on our sides, we lifted our top legs and rotated them. For a runner like me, with weak hip and side stabilizer muscles, the movements proved incredibly difficult.

When we moved to weights, I was initially surprised that the heaviest set was just 3 pounds. It wasn’t long, though, before I was wishing I’d grabbed the 1s or 2s. The 3-pound weights become immensely heavier when holding them out and making tiny motions back and forth for a substantial length of time.

By the time we ended with a set of  abdominals and obliques that lasted 15 minutes , I was completely convinced of Barre3’s butt-kicking nature. This is no kick-back stretching session. My muscles were totally fatigued.   

Barre3 is offering new students three classes for $30 or an unlimited number of classes for one month for $100. After that, unlimited per month prices range from $125 (for one year) to $175 (for a shorter time).  Students can enroll in advance online, since certain times of day tend to be more heavily booked. (Late morning in Bellevue, and after work on Capitol Hill.)

For true bargain hunters, Barre3 plans to run a daily deal with PopSugar in August, offering three classes for $15.


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