Saturday, March 28, 2015

Passing the Barre

Given my love for ballet, it was only one logical step for me to look at a Barre certification course. And just at I had decided to look into it further, an opportunity for the very thing presented itself in Raleigh J. The stars were lining up.

The course provider is Core Barre™, and its creator is Monica Hoekstra.  Given my over 20 years in the fitness industry and a fair amount of education, I am a rather critical consumer and not easily persuaded. The content and presentation of Monica’s course, though, meets my full approval, and I enjoy it very much. Her approach to what she calls ‘Smart Movement’ is fully in line with my training of MELT, The BioMechanics Method and the other corrective exercise modalities that I employ.  I am a hawk on good posture myself, and her entire Core Barre™ system is geared towards improving posture through the strengthening of the stabilizing muscles of the shoulder girdle, hip and core.

The course has elements of ballet without being a ballet class. Her suggested syllabus includes an intelligent warm-up, a segment on the barre, and floor exercises which are mainly inspired by Pilates.


Once I have ‘incorporated’ those exercises into my own body, I intend to augment them with MELT Length and Strength techniques. This format will be one only taught at my studio to a small number of participants, so be on the lookout for an announcement some time soon.

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