Hi there,

I'm trying to figure out where to begin. I've been doing about 20 min of barre strength (using Suzanne Bowen's DVD segments) and 10-20 minutes of barre stretch 6 days/wk for a few months now.

I'd like to take change things up a bit, but am worried about overdoing it. I have a super stressful life right now, so adding in cardio and hard/long strength workouts often makes me feel worse.

I'm tempted to just do the 4 month DVD challenge because I actually like to repeat and perfect barre workouts. Although I wonder if the BB periodization program I would be a better choice. I just know in the past, periodized programs sometimes increase in intensity too much, too fast for me.

Do you have any suggestions?

Also, are we supposed to warm-up and stretch before the workout on our own? I didn't see anything listed in the workout schedules, on in the videos.

And lastly, how are we supposed to create a schedule out of the monthly videos listed? (Example, those listed under January 2019, February 2019 etc)? Perform them 1x throughout the week for four weeks?

I appreciate your help:)

Thanks,
Heather

Hi Heather,
Thanks for your questions! If you find that cardio or hard strength workouts make you feel worse, then do the workouts that make you feel better for sure! Repeating barre workouts and slowing progressing them will give you the best results versus jumping around, so that's great you would like to stay with one program at a time. The BBTS programs can be quite intense because the amount of time spent on one muscle group towards the end in the splits. You may be better off staying with the total body workouts right now. I love the DVD rotation and think that is a great place to start. Also, the Iron Barre express workout plan would be another option. There are strength workouts in here but you can modify with light weights or use your own body weight as well. With only 3 days of week of 30 minutes though, you will have time to recover on the off days and you can stretch on those days or do yoga if you would like. The new weekly workouts you can throw into any of the programs and switch it out for a similar muscle group focus to check out the workout, but I eventually program every workout into a training plan. It's a nice option to change things up if you are on for example week 3 of a program and you want to add in the new weekly workout on day of the week. I continue to make new programs with the workouts and I have three I'm trying to get finished up soon for the new year. I do say in the beginning of most of the segments to do a general body warm up- I have a couple of segments you can choose to use or just do some dynamic cardio movement before beginning your workouts. You don't have to stretch right after the workout, but you should definitely include stretching in throughout the week. You can do this on off days, after workouts, at the end of day. I have yoga and stretching segments that offer you options as well. Hope this helps!

Thank you so much for your thoughtful response. For a myriad of reasons, I can’t work out like I used to, so it’s nice to have options within a smartly-designed barre program.

I think I’m going to stick with about 20-30 minutes of strength (upper, lower and/or core) and follow it up with stretching most days of the week- at least for now. I’ve actually gotten quite a bit stronger doing just this with other barre workouts. And I think I can even split up the beginning of the first periodization program into these segments to make the workouts shorter, and allow for recovery.

I appreciate your feedback. I’m looking forward to eventually getting to the iron barre workouts!