Have you ever wanted change?
Craved it?
Have you ever said, “I will do anything. Whatever it takes.”
That was me almost 20 months ago. I had recently gotten out of a relationship and had eaten my way up to 235 lbs. This was no good. I was embarrassed by my body. My confidence was false bravado. This was the perfect time to do what so many of us talk about.
Four months later, through clean eating and a steady exercise regiment, I weighed 180 lbs and had 5.5% body fat. I may have gone a little too far in the other direction, but I needed to see that I could define my muscles. Steadily, I have put 25 lbs back on and I have been leaning out. I feel incredible. False bravado was replaced by a complete lack of care. Freedom is no longer a word I cannot comprehend.
There are several ways to get to a healthier, happier you. It doesn’t have to be a “4 hours a day in a gym, 6 days a week” thing, or “taking in 1200 calories a day and never eating a carb” (which by the way are delicious and necessary). The key is to pick a program and start. You don’t have to change everything overnight. Change comes gradually. Commit to a month. In those 30 days you will change so much that there will truly be no going back if you are truly committed.
In the coming issues, we will spotlight several fun and challenging ways change the person you see in the mirror, which can help you change the world around you.
Month 1: Go to your Neighborhood Barre
Some of you are suddenly stoked and thinking, “HEY! I already do this. He added and extra few letters to the end of the word, but this sounds easy enough.”
Sorry, neighbors, we’re not talking about your favorite watering hole. To those of you unfamiliar with the concept, barre is based on ballet, but has evolved into much more. Katy Richardson is helping spread the movement throughout the Southeast. She opened two studios in Knoxville, TN and in 2014 she began franchising. Studios were opened in Birmingham, AL (2014) and Brentwood, TN (2015). She even opened a pop up studio in Maryville, TN (2015), to test how smaller markets respond to a barre studio. There will be another opening in Chattanooga, TN by the end of the year.
Question 1: What is it?
“There are different types of Barre workouts and every studio does something a little bit different. Our workout, at Neighborhood Barre, is based off of the original. It’s called the ‘Lotte Berk method,’” explained Richardson.
Lotte Berk was a German born ballet dancer who invented a method which concentrates on targeting specific areas for strength and flexibility. “One of our challenges is educating the market. Just like not every yoga class in not the same, every barre isn’t (the same) barre. It has an athletic element to it versus a dance element. You still get dance fundamentals in the positions that we start our moves in and in a lot of the ways that we hold our body, but no actual dancing. There is an interval cardio effect in our workout,” said Richardson.
“Everything is broken up into sections. Warm up, thighs, seat, abs and cool down. We get your heart rate up high in the warm up. We keep it high through thigh work. We bring it down a little bit in seat work and concentrate more on working deep in the muscle. We work deep in abs which are really quick, so you start to sweat as you raise your heart rate back up and then we cool down. Every class is 55 minutes unless it is a specialty class. We have a lower impact class that is 45 minutes. We are going to launch a cardio style class, more of a tabata style (a form of HIIT – High Intensity Interval Training in which you workout in burst with slight rest between. Typically 30 seconds on and 15 seconds off.), but not like boot camp. We would use variations of our moves.”
What if I have preexisting injuries? What if I’m not flexible? What if I can’t do the moves?
First, stop focusing on negative what ifs. You can do anything you put your mind to, if you’re willing. There are plenty of variations to any move. “From the beginning our workout is very low impact. There is no jumping or bouncing. Any full range moves we do are far and in between. (example: squatting all the way down and up).”
“We do have modifications. Knee injuries, neck injuries, hip injuries and foot injuries are the most common things that we see in our classes. We have a lot of pregnant women who come through the door too. We have modifications for everything. Sometimes we have people do a totally different move that works the same part of the body. We are very hands on. You will see people get great results because we insure they are in the proper positioning to get the maximum out of the move. We have eighteen year olds with their 45-year-old moms. We have 45-year-old women who come with their 75-year-old moms.”
What to wear?
Remember, you don’t have to be “fashionable” to get into shape. Knowing what will best suit you for a workout is a combination of necessity and comfort. Find your own and rock it.
“I always suggest a legging, because we do moves with different pieces of equipment that we pull behind our knees, with whatever you want on top, t-shirt, tank top. We are a barefoot studio (socks are welcome) because we use cork flooring (which is amazingly comfortable).”
Katy Richardson’s background
“I cheered all through high school into college. In my junior year of college I got a neck and shoulder injury so I couldn’t do the same workouts that everyone else was doing. One year later, to the day, October 8th, I suffered a re-injury to my neck. They were both whiplash injuries and I had to stop all together. My orthopedic doctor didn’t want me to be at risk to get another because he didn’t know if I would be permanently affected by it. I transitioned out of my normal workout, which was running stadiums (up and down long flights of stairs with sprints in-between) and weight lifting. I transitioned away from that into yoga and went religiously. I moved away from Birmingham to Dallas where I was doing an internship and found a yoga studio that did barre. When I came back in 2008, barre studios were starting to become prevalent. I was already into yoga and Pilates and saw that barre was coming onto the scene. I saw a business opportunity. My background in school was in finance and accounting but I decided to quit my accounting job. I knew enough about the body and anatomy and had become a certified yoga instructor a few years prior. I knew how to structure a class and knew how a traditional Lotte Berk style class was structured. I tried to stay away from attending another barre studios, because I wanted to find what worked and use that to build my program. We have always stayed fundamentally the same, but we will evolve with moves and equipment to build the technique.”
How much does it cost?
Getting into shape can work with any budget. That said, barre training is akin to using a personal trainer every workout. You can go multiple times a day and never pay a cancellation fee for missing and don’t have to schedule specific times to meet.
“We offer new client specials (30 classes for $30 or 1 month unlimited for $100). We let everyone attend their first class for free, because you should try it before you buy it. The majority of folks who come to our studios are on the unlimited package. If you are going to come ten or more times a month, this is more bang for your buck. We also do a 10, 20, 30 and 50 class pass. The more classes you buy, the less it costs and the longer the expiration date is on the pass,” said Richardson. “The pricing is different based on length of commitment. There are also specials for different groups. It’s $100/month for students and teachers. We have a young professionals discount, because we have so many students who come through who quit because of the price jump between student and adult, which is $125/month. A full price month unlimited is $200 (no contract). The difference is that a barre class or pilates class or yoga class that you attend at a gym can have 50 or 60 people in it. There is no way possible that an instructor can physically touch or get around to that many people. When you have between 10 and 25 people in a class, they can get around to each person. We do between four and six classes a day, during peak times (morning and afternoon). The earliest class is 6:00 am and the latest class is 6:35 pm.”
If you’re interested in finding out more about barre classes, just google “barre in Knoxville” it to find the most convenient location for your lifestyle.
