Bar Method

So, in my never ending quest to try every workout and stick with none, I tried the Bar Method workout yesterday. Even before I had tried my first class, I bought the unlimited month of classes for $100. I'm fairly intrigued b/c it seems that it must really be able to hook a large number of people because there are definitely a lot of regulars and the price goes up significantly after the first month. If I do decide to stick with it though, there's a military discount which makes the price a little more tolerable.

The workout was hard! I knew it would be but still, it's unbelievable that those little movements can cause so much pain. The pain is different from other workouts I've tried. Normal pain usually involves feeling muscle fibers tear and ligaments overstretch which makes me dread the stiffness that I know will come the next day. The bar method pain is just complete and total muscle fatigue without destroying it so while I'm sore in certain areas today, I can definitely go back again tonight. I'm going to try and go 5 times a week for the next four weeks to maximize the chance that I'll see a significant change that will make me want to stick with it.

Overall, the class was a mix of size, ages and shapes although thin, buff and early 30's dominated. One girl's shoulders in particular were ridiculously toned. I usually keep to myself during workouts out of habit from years of running solo, but it was helpful to peek at people to figure out what the heck was going on since the instructor didn't do very many of the exercises. She moved around a lot to correct positioning but certain verbal instructions were hard to implement without a visual.

I'm also going to keep my cardio routine in place for two reasons: 1. I have my half marathon at the end of April and 2. when I gave up running to devote all my time to P90X, I gained about 7 pounds that I'm trying to work off right now. Those pounds, btw, were definitely not all muscle. So, even though the American founder Burr Leonard is against running for several reasons, I'm going to keep it up. I plan on tracking myself both by weight loss (hopefully!) and how my corduroys that are too small currently fit. Hopefully I can fit into them by the time I go to Denmark because they are super-cute. Unfortunately, cords tend to become uncute very quickly if one tries to stuff herself into them. Cords definitely need to be a touch loose to look right, rather than oh-so-wrong.