There’s something taking over LA (and my life) and it’s improving my arms, my legs, my tummy, and – best of all – my ass. Forget yoga, forget pilates, forget fad exercises (adult-sized hula hoops? Wtf?) and especially forget endless boring hours on the pre-core or treadmill and your local, dumpy 24 hour fitness. Gross. For me it’s all about exercises like Pure Barre and The Bar Method – two actually worth all the hype, fad-free fitness companies that are offshoots of a form exercise developed by the late Lotte Berk.

Born in Cologne, Germany to a Russian father and German mother (both Jewish), ballet dancer Burke fled from the Nazis to the U.K. with her dancer husband where she continued to perform. But ballet is a young woman’s game and so Burke, with the help of an osteopath, developed a method of exercise based on her ballet training to give non-dancers a dancer’s body. You know the kind: long, lean, taut, with perfect posture and eye-boggling flexibility. Basically, the kind of body I’d suffer for. And suffer her students did. Her obituary describes her central London studio as  a place where she “terrorized generations of women into shape,” including the awesome Joan Collins, and that  ”any woman who could not keep a 10p coin still on their extended thigh risked receiving a flick of the riding crop that Berk kept.” She was also a notorious flirt, discarded men left and right, and always has a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. I think we could hang. Check out this Bazaar article circa 1994 on Lotte Berk.

In the 1970s the US got their taste of this exercise from Lotte Berk disciple Lydia Bach. And 40 years later there are two offshoots of the method available for us Angelenos who want to have bodies that will make other woman hate us. One is The Bar Method (read Amy’s review here), founded by Burr Leonard. (Read Burr’s fabulous blog here.) I can often be found sweating, trembling, and groaning in their West Hollywood studios and loving (and hating!) every minute of it.

And last weekend I was off to try another offshoot called Pure Barre, that only a few months ago opened their very first LA-area location in Brentwood. Founded by another Lotte Berk disciple named Carrie Rezabek, Purre Barre is all about high-intensity isometric movements that build muscle pronto (students, they say, see results in just 10 classes). There’s no bouncing or jumping so that your joints won’t get hammered like they do in other forms of exercise like jogging. Each trembling-inducing exercise series is followed by a stretching section so that your body will achieve long lean muscles instead of the bulky she-male kind. There’s definitely a meditation factor in this too as you need to focus with this exercise so that annoying fight with your boyfriend before class will be but a distant memory when you’re holding on for dear life to the ballet barre and because your legs are shaking like crazy. The beautiful Marni Rosenthal Chaikin taught the class (she also owns the studio btw) and though she was a pro dancer and Pilates instructor, she says it was Pure Barre that, very quickly, gave her the best results she’s ever seen on her own body.

All classes are taught in a carpeted studio and students are all in their socks – I’d advise getting slipper socks or Pure Barre socks because the little pads at the bottom really keep you from sliding all over the place. You grab a mat, a teensy basketball, a resistance band for stretching, and 2 lb and 3 lb weights. (Yes, I chuckled egoistically to myself too when I saw the 2 lb weights – who works out with those? But believe me, after holding a pose with a 2 lb weight for a while, it’ll feel like 50.) Warm-ups consist of weight exercises that involve tiny isometric movements that really get to the muscle, plus some other awful stuff that I don’t want to get into right now, but I was pretty sweaty by the time I even touched the ballet barre. And the teensy basketball? That’s to hold between your thighs as you’re standing straight on your tip-toes with knees bent as low as you can go. It sucks, but damn do my legs look awesome. Then there’s core exercises that have your stomach trembling for like 10 minutes. The day after my Pure Barre class it felt as if someone had punched me in each of my obliques – and I love feeling like that this close to bikini season.

So which to pick? Pure Barre or The Bar Method? They’re equally fantastic and there’s room in LA for the both of them. The two also have DVDs out, but really, there’s nothing like taking the class. I find when I get a DVD they just sit under my TV and I always think as I’m into my fourth episode of a Real Housewives marathon that I really do that DVD, but it doesn’t really ever happen. Plus so much of the benefit comes from proper form and from pushing yourself farther than you think you’re capable and having an instructor there to help you is a necessity. With this type of exercise, never have I seen results so quickly, and no other workout has made me come back again, and again, and again. I can’t stop admiring my biceps I finally can get my triceps to “pop” out. And short shorts? I can’t wait for this June gloom to go away so I can prance around in them!

If you’d like to try a free class, The Bar Method offers first-timers a sample. And both Pure Barre and Bar Method offer a month’s worth of unlimited classes for a special, newbies only, price of $100. Plus, during the summer when you most need it, Pure Barre’s Brentwood studio is offering unlimited classes for $175/month.

Pure Barre Brentwood, 11819 Wilshire Blvd. Ste 213

The Bar Method, 8416 W. Third Street, West Hollywood

Nicole

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