Various types of workouts can help you improve your physical as well as mental health. One form of physical exercise is the Barre workout. Now, what are they and what are their health benefits? To know about these, we have to take a look at the following array of the article.
Barre Workouts: What Are They And What Are Their Benefits?
Barre is a form of physical exercise that is generally conducted in group classes in specialty studios or gyms.(1) Barre workouts have rapidly expanded in popularity in the 2010s. These workouts are focused intensely on improving your core strength, developing muscles, and improving your body flexibility. Barre workouts are also known to improve your posture. Barre workouts are also good for improving your physique, mental health, and overall appearance.
What are Barre Workouts?
Barre workouts are low-impact workouts that can be done at home, in a gym, or a studio to gain strength, improve posture, muscles, and more. Such a type of workout involves dance moves that are found commonly in ballet, and also other forms of exercises, such as Pilates, yoga, and aerobics.
While participating in barre workout classes you should wear comfortable clothes, bare feet, and a few pieces of equipment like a mat and a chair.
Barre workouts can contribute to your overall health and fitness, keep your body strong, and help you in maintaining healthy body weight.
Depending on the type of class and its format, barre classes can involve a lot of different elements of exercise.
Barre workout would likely involve ballet movements, such as plies and releves, and you will also use a bar or any other waist-high object for stabilizing yourself.
These exercises depend on isometric movements, which focus on flexing certain types of muscles one at a time, without contracting or expanding them.
What Are The Health Benefits of Barre Workouts?
Barre workouts, not only have some amazing health benefits but are also extremely safe for pregnant women since they are low-impact exercises. Let us take a look at some of the health benefits of Barre workouts.
Barre Workouts Make You Stronger:
The isometric contractions occur with barre workouts when the muscle tenses without changing length. Consider these movements as the opposite of the usual strength training moves (or concentric contraction and eccentric contractions), which happen when a muscle stretches then shortens. Isometric exercise is a great way for maintaining muscle strength.(2)
Isometric movements help in isolating specific muscles. Moreover, isometric movements are also known to help in strengthening muscles without straining ligaments or tendons, and thus there is less risk of injury as compared to other traditional strength training.(3)
They Improve Muscle Endurance:
When you perform barre workouts regularly, it will increase your muscular endurance. Endurance is known to influence your heartbeat and breathing patterns. Moreover, you will be able to exercise harder and longer.
Endurance even reduces your risk of developing health conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes, and specific type of cancer.
They Strengthen Your Glutes:
One more health benefit of barre workouts is that they strengthen your glutes and working on your glutes helps in strengthening all the muscles stabilizing the pelvis. Ultimately, this can help in alleviating pressure on your hips, back, and knees.
Barre Workouts Improve Mind-Body Connection:
The smaller movements that you perform in barre workouts can get a new level of awareness to the body that you won’t get in regular strength training exercises. Barre workouts can improve muscular activation for frequently underused muscles by strengthening your mind-body or neuro-muscular connection.
Barre Workouts Burn Calories For Longer:
People exercising regularly must be familiar with something called, “the after-burn effect”, or “excess post-exercise oxygen consumption or EPOC”. This means that your body can keep burning calories even after the completion of your workout. Barre workouts and other resistance exercises can create this after-burn effect.
Barre can ramp up the metabolism of your body for up to 48 hours. It can cause a calorie burn that keeps going even after the barre workout is over. This is because barre workouts elevate your heart rate in intervals and cause a calorie burn. Those who are looking to shed some extra pounds from their body might be benefited from this workout.
They Improve Posture:
One can get the benefit of an improved posture by doing Barre workouts regularly. One might find sitting or standing straighter after doing barre workouts.
Good posture influences your outlook and also influences what’s going on inside the body quite positively. It can reduce pressure on your spine, and thus reduce your chances of getting back pain and injury. Barre workouts also help you to take deeper breaths.
Barre Workouts Increase Flexibility:
What could be more exciting, that enhanced flexibility of the body? Barre workouts help you in improving your flexibility and also the range of motion in the joints. This is because barre workouts involve a lot of stretching.
Maintaining the flexibility of the body makes it easier to move throughout the day. Moreover, it can also prevent stiffness when you sit for a long time.
They Increase Your Bone Density:
One more health benefit of Barre workout is that they increase your bone density. These workouts help you to maintain or increase bone density. Reduced bone density can cause osteoporosis, and this can result in bone weakness and breaks.
Barre Workouts Are A Great Rehabilitative Exercise:
Being a very low impact exercise, barre workouts are used frequently as an introduction to full-body workouts after injury, surgery, or even during pregnancy. Thus barre workouts are considered to be a great rehabilitative exercise.
They Help In Reducing Stress:
Are you someone suffering from stress and willing to know about exercises that can help you reduce stress? Well, we must let you know that Barre workouts are amongst those exercises that help in reducing stress.
Barre fitness is a mental challenge, as each movement in this workout requires a level of mindfulness for staying engaged. It is like a form of meditation, as your brain remains focused on each small movement while performing barre moves. You will surely feel lifted and calm by doing Barre workouts every day.
Final Words:
So, we are aware of so many health benefits of barre workouts. Now, we have so many reasons for doing this exercise. One more thing is barre workouts are simple to perform and suitable for any fitness level. To get maximum results you should be consistent and committed to your exercising routine.
Make a note that if you are a beginner and want to know how many times a week you should do this workout, then we would suggest you do it at least twice a week. You would be enjoying the workout and also get the best of its health benefits out of it.
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