6 Benefits of Barre You Want to Know

Still not convinced about barre? Read on to learn some of the best benefits of taking a barre class!

Photo by Mackenzie Gaultier Photography

If you incorporate barre classes into your regular weekly routine, you soon notice all the benefits from this balletic exercise program. For those who haven’t tried barre yet, or are still relatively new, you’re in for a treat.

Obviously, one of the primary reasons that someone takes a barre class is physical exercise. We’ve seen what a prima-ballerina looks like, and who wouldn’t want those toned legs with a solid core and lean arms?

It’s important to note that if your main focus is to lose weight, adding in cardiovascular exercise (running, brisk walks, the treadmill, or another activity that significantly increases your heart rate) and a proper diet is essential. Although you’ll feel your heart rate pick up and you will lose weight over time in barre, there typically isn’t enough cardio elements to get the quick results many seek (for now, at least).

With that said, though, if you’re only doing barre workouts as part of your fitness routine, you’re going to experience many significant benefits that will impact and change your life.

Do I have you hooked enough now to keep reading on…?

Let’s Talk About Sex

Now, for the one benefit that rarely gets talked about but should absolutely get noted, I put it right at the top. SEX. There, it’s said. This is the one benefit that is often overlooked, brushed over, forgotten about, ignored, or not known at all. 

If you’re curious about the history of barre and the sexual roots it stems from, here’s a good article worth reading.

How can barre benefit your sex life? To start, all of the tucks, hip movements, thrusts during a bridge series, and even the emphasis on the core help strengthen your pelvic floor (a group of ligaments, muscles and fascia that provides support or your bladder, bowel, and uterus). A strong pelvic floor not only supports all those body parts, but it helps control your bladder as well.

Your pelvic floor muscles can help make your intimate moments feel even better, both for men and women. Also, it is this muscle that aids during pregnancy. Basically, the pelvic floor muscle that you strengthen in barre workouts helps pre-baby and post-baby.

Now, to the more talked about benefits of barre.

Tone, Baby, Tone

When working out, there’s a difference between bulking up and toning your body. Although both methods help you develop muscle, it’s the approach that you take to get there, and how your body looks that differs. Keep in mind, though, that we all have factors that are beyond our control that influence how we build muscle and how much.

When you tone, you’re targeting more of your body fat than muscle. As you lose weight, the lean muscle that we all have slowly begins showing underneath your skin. For those looking to bulk up their muscles, they’re focusing on increasing the size of their muscles - aka increased muscle mass. For a good comparison, think of a bodybuilder standing beside a dancer.

Through barre workouts, the small movements not only target particular muscles and strengthen them, but they also help boost your metabolism to lose fat at the same time. Working each muscle to the point of fatigue (when you just can’t hold that chair any longer), they need energy to build themselves back up. That energy comes from stored fat, and as we know, when you lose fat, your muscles start to show.

Boost Your Metabolism - Aka, Always Hungry

When I first started getting serious with barre, one thing I quickly noticed is that I snacked more and woke up hungry. As I soon found out, my tired muscles were burning through body fat to recover from my previous workout. The result - my body was burning calories more often than before, which increased my metabolism.

Increasing your metabolism is an excellent benefit of a good, consistent barre workout routine. Just ensure that you’re maintaining a healthy calorie intake to keep up with the added strengthening to your body.

Feel Good as You Look Good

How often do you find yourself focusing on how you look more than anything else? Chances are, we can all say that this happens now and then. Although there’s nothing wrong with wanting to look good, how we feel on the inside is so important.

How can barre make you feel good, though, when you’re dying in class? To start, research shows that even a quick workout can boost your mood and make you happier and more cheerful. Our brains recognize the stress of a workout, which makes it release endorphins - those happy hormones that fight stress. So, that hyped-up feeling you feel after class? You can thank those stress-fighting hormones.

Another benefit of barre that boosts how you feel comes from your posture. Since there is such a significant focus on your core and posture, that tall feeling you have during a barre class will eventually transition into your everyday life. That’s because you’ll not only build the proper muscle to maintain proper posture, you’ll just like how it feels.

Join an Empowering Community

Who doesn’t want to be around a group of people that encourage one another and cheer everyone on? Well, welcome to a barre class.

Seriously, though, how can being in a group class be a benefit? If you’ve never attended one, you need to in order to really appreciate how this IS a benefit. You’re less likely to give up when you’re surrounded by people doing the same thing. Every person in that room likely has the same thoughts as you. Not only that, but when you have an instructor that is encouraging you through the entire class, it makes a world of a difference.

Move and Bend

Can you touch your toes? Maybe not right now. But a few months of consistent barre classes and you’ll likely grab those little piggies when you reach down.

What helps build lean muscles is incorporating stretches, and we do just that. Stretching is often overlooked in a workout, but is one of the most important aspects to include. It’s what keeps our joints mobile.

Forgetting to stretch, or not caring about your flexibility, causes your muscles to tighten and shorten. If you’re not worried about doing the splits or some of those crazy yoga moves, this may not seem like a big issue to you. But if it’s put into this perspective - short, tight muscles slowly weaken and cannot move within their full range of motion, you’re at risk of injuries and muscle damage.

So, yeah, all the stretches we incorporate is a huge benefit.

Will we see you at the barre…?

There you have it; some of the top benefits of barre, according to yours truly! I focused on these six benefits because I found them to be the most noticeable and the most important ones for our overall health.

Have you noticed other benefits from regularly attending barre classes not noted above?