Lower Body Barre is part of Linda Wooldridge’s 100 Rep Challenge series. She has 10 workouts in this series (here is her 100 Rep Challenge play list so you can view them all). You can also buy the entire series on DVD (which I have now done). The idea behind these workouts is that you do 100 reps of each exercise in the workout. There are 10 exercises, so each workout actually contains 1,000 reps!
Wow–this was another serious lower body burnout workout. Linda hits your lower body from all angles using standing barre work and mat work. I don’t know if it is because this has already been a lower body heavy workout week for me or if it was just this workout alone–but my legs were (and still are) fried. To keep things interesting, you do variations of an exercise within your 100 reps. For example, #1 is wide plie squats. You do full plie squats, pulsing plie squats in different tempo patterns and you even place your hands on the ground while continuing to plie squat. She does variations like this with all of the exercises. This is definitely an excellent lower body barre workout. At 30 minutes you can pair it with some of her other workouts or use it like I did, as my stand alone doubles workout (second workout of the day). But it would work really nicely to finish off a heavier strength workout (one that uses dumbbells). If it was another trainer it would have to be reserved for a weekend workout (because their workouts are usually longer than 30 minutes) but Linda has a few lower body strength workouts (that use dumbbells) that are under 30 minutes and this would work very nicely to completely finish your legs off afterward. Old School Lower Body is 26:30 minutes and Pyramid Lower Body is 26:30 minutes (I actually like to pair those two together, but this would also work nicely to finish either one off). You could also use it to finish off Linda’s Lower Body Strength, but that one is longer–44 minutes.
Lower Body Barre is 30 minutes long; 1:30 intro, no warm up and 2:30 minute stretch. Equipment: chair and mat
- Wide plié squat variations
- On hands and knees, raise and lower straight leg behind you (plus different variations of this basic move)
- Repeat #2 on other leg
- Barre squat variations (on toes w/ spine straight, using chair for balance)
- Pretzel variations (basic pretzel position: sit on mat, one leg bent in front of you and the other bent behind you, so your legs are in a sort of Z or pretzel–in these variations you will raise and lower back leg, add a side kick to the raise and lower, push back leg out further behind you)
- Repeat #5 on other leg
- Stand behind or beside chair, raise onto toes, knees bent, spine straight and tilt hips in and out (using chair for balance) (you will do various hip tilt variations)
- Lay on side, top leg bent w/ foot on floor behind you, raise and lower bottom straight leg (you will do variations on this basic move)
- Repeat #8 on other leg
- Hip bridge variations
For more info on Barlates and other (free) streaming workouts I’ve sampled and reviewed, check out my Streaming page.
