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| Image from: blog.beauty-goodies.com |
I can't believe it's been 10 months already since I started Bar Method! Everything is still going well, I love the classes and teachers and continue to go about 4x a week. I have to admit there have been a few weeks when I do 3x a week, but for the most part it's been 4x/wk and that amount feels right to me. As I sit here, I feel soreness in pretty much every muscle. Despite the constant muscle soreness (which varies in intensity depending on the class), I've never experienced an actual injury doing Bar Method so I'm not too worried.
One thing I've come to realize is that the class is sneaky. It's structured into arm, thigh, butt, ab sections but even when you think you are just targeting one area, the only way to do each exercise properly is to work the other parts too. So for example, when you do the pretzel you are supposedly targeting your butt. But you also end up torturing your obliques and your arms and since posture is emphasized throughout the class, you are always working your back muscles. Actually, that's probably the correction I get the most - "Open your chest" "Engage your back muscles" "Draw your shoulders back." It's awesome though because now I have great posture.
Still using the same weights, but they still feel challenging so oh well. I might be ready to move up from the 1 lb weight for the one arm lift/lunge exercise though. Wish there were half step weights, like 1.5 lbs. My main goals when I started this was to improve strength and flexibility and I think I've done both, although there are still many things to work toward. There's one girl who is in my class sometimes that I love watching because she's crazy flexible so all the positions look beautiful and graceful when she does them. I'm not sure I'll ever attain that level of flexibility, but one can try!
