Bar Method: Dancer's Body Advanced Workout

Title: Bar Method: Dancer's Body Advanced Workout

Instructor: Marnie Alton

Time: 65 Minutes

Level of Difficulty: Advanced

DVD menu: Play workout

Production quality: high

Equipment used: light weights, barre

I would consider myself to be an advanced exerciser (Dream Body/Tonique being my mainstays) and over the past several months have fallen in love with barre workouts. I really enjoy Ballet Body, Ballet Physique, P57, Pure Barre, etc. I enjoy both the faster/bigger range of motion genre of barre (Booty Barre or P57) and the tiny pulses/more traditional barre (Bar Method, Pure Barre, Ballet Physique). I have probably used well over 20 workouts from the genre (the best reviewed and most challenging) and would consider this to be the QUEEN of the traditional barre (tiny pulses) workouts that I have done. Marnie wastes no time working you hard with the tiny reps and moving along to the next exercise, but with great stretches in between and without the workout feeling rushed. And the workout definitely lives up to the "advanced" assertion in the title. I find most barre workouts to be invigorating and energizing, but find Dancer's Body to be nearly grueling (but so, SO very effective).

Dancer's Body follows the traditional barre format: warm up, upper body toning, then legs, then seat, then finish with ab work, and stretch. Marching in place for the warm up, then use light weights to work the shoulders, biceps, and triceps (I found the bicep work, which is usually a neglected area in barre workouts, to be surprisingly challenging), then down to the ground for pushups and tricep dips with leg raises. The leg work included calf pulses, then all varieties of standing leg work at the barre, first position, second position, etc. and each exercise included pulses as well as sitbacks and tucks in some cases. She leads you through a really nice leg stretch (kneeling in a low lunge then into the splits) before getting to the glute work, which was performed standing and included lots of pulses with leg reached high to the back, and in an attitude position. The ab work was c-curve variations made very challenging with yet more pulses and quick transitions. Followed by the ab work is a brief (but again, very challenging) bridge work series, then stretch.

Like with any barre workouts, the workout can easily be made harder (or easier) with how deep you go into each movement, how high you hold your legs, etc. However, this really is an advanced workout and I think someone would get the most out of it, if they already had a barre foundation. (Although the instruction is great). This is definitely a must have for any more advanced barre enthusiast.

General Description: This workout is strongly based on the Lotte Berk Method and includes traditional barre exercises utilized in their previous releases that focus on using a small range of motion. On the whole it seemed to offer an array of exercises to target the upper body, core, and lower body. For most exercises you do 24 reps (3 sets of 8 with no rest), and all of the background exercisers have great form and show that you can make some moves more challenging (ie. a deep plie versus a shallow one). This one also targeted the calves more than other barre workouts I've been doing.

Overall Impressions: I thought this was an advanced whole body workout which added intensity by increasing the number of reps performed and challenging you to go deeper into moves. There is also much less set-up time in than their previous work, which is a plus for me.