I was recently teaching a barre class and performing a side lying floor track when I began to feel my outer booty muscles cramping up. Suddenly my leg couldn't do the movement at all - it literally wouldn't move - all the mind body focus in the world and my leg refused to move. I quickly reset, got back into it and immediately started reviewing the playlist in my head. I began to analyze where I had spent my focus to have my leg get to that point and it was clear. My choice in songs for that particular class was overly focused on outer booty tracks and I had reached a point of exhaustion and let me tell you, I felt it the following day - and it wasn't in a good way - it ended up as joint pain.
This brings me to an important question, what is the point of a fitness class if you are so sore and in pain the next day that you can't move or workout? Does this create functional movement?
In many traditional barre classes, we hold and pulse to the end of our days, going to the point of muscle exhaustion which can ultimately end in joint pain.
While we see the importance of challenging our muscles and understand that when we exercise, the physical and cellular response to that exercise is muscle soreness. However, the goal of any workout is to foster and create FUNCTIONAL movement.
What IS functional movement? In short, functional movement is the way our body moves in relation to the world around it. Movement in real life, day to day activities. Fun fact - functional movement has a key component - core stability! And the FUN part? Well, that's where UpBeat Barre comes in - adding the FUN into FUNctional!
When creating class playlists, our goal at UpBeat Barre is to focus on creating 3-dimensional movement. We never want to over train and exhaust a single muscle group. We encourage you to include all planes of motion. Break it down, it's important to analyze your playlists, do you have too much focus on the shoulders or quads? Do you have enough lengthening and extending movements to distribute oxygen and fluid through the fascia? Another fun fact - that oxygen distribution helps with recovery! There is so much more to a class than just putting those grooving tunes and fun moves together - there's a science to the movement!