Is Barre Effective for Those 50+? A Guide to At-Home Barre Exercises and Their Benefits

In our continuing efforts to research and share new ways to help you discover or tailor a fitness program to suit your needs and goal, we want to offer you a guide to barre workouts.

Let's look more closely at this practice that can help you improve your cardiovascular endurance, tone your muscles, boost your flexibility, and tighten up your core strength as you get older. 

What Is Barre? 

Kim Watson, a Tennessee YMCA instructor, described the barre method as a combination workout that draws on the fun, upbeat music used in Zumba to perform Pilates and strength movements associated with Pilates and yoga.  

Barre is a toning, bodyweight, and lifting workout. It features small, detailed ballet movements that are accessible for anyone to do, even at home.

A barre exercise routine offers the opportunity to get excellent physical, mental, and cognitive results from doing something brand new and full of challenges at age 50 and beyond. 

You might ask yourself, "Is barre a good workout for me?" Let's learn more to help you understand the many barre benefits and how to get started and reap the many rewards awaiting you. 

A Brief History of the Barre Method

Nearly 30 years after Joseph Pilates started his famous fitness and recovery system in the 1920s, Lottie Berk, a modern dancer and fellow German developed the barre method in 1959 in London. Berk designed this exercise method, serving as its namesake, to stay fit while trying to recover from a back injury she incurred while trying to help a client stretch. 

With the help of her osteopath, she focused on curving her back during exercises to avoid agitating the injury. The method focused on functional strength exercises, using her bodyweight and light hand weights to boost her functional strength. 

Her time working on this method on her own inspired her to use her experience in both her dance background and the barre method as therapy to create what we now know as barre fitness.

What Are the Barre Benefits You Can Expect?

With the right instructor, routine, and enthusiastic outlook, you can expect some terrific benefits from your barre practice. 

Here are some top benefits of taking regular barre classes: 

• Improved Core Strength. Enhancing your balance and strengthening your core are essential focal points of each barre class. Your core is an integral part of the training, using your abdominal muscles to correct your body's alignment. As a bonus, you can tighten and tone your stomach in ways that many other exercise regimens can't seem to match. 

• Increased Overall Strength. If you dread heading to the weight room to use nautilus equipment or free weights, barre exercises offer the perfect alternative. Similar to yoga and Pilates, barre sessions rely on using your bodyweight, light handweights, stability balls, and resistance bands. Even better, you can usually hit all the crucial muscle groups in one workout instead of having to remember what day is "legs day" and what day is "chest day," etc. So, as a bonus, it's a timesaver in its approach. 

• Boosted Endurance. You'll still need to get in your daily walks and other low-impact cardiovascular exercise engagements, but barre routines can help enhance your endurance for future workouts in and out of the barre classroom. Best of all, consistent participation in barre exercise classes can help strengthen and protect your vital organs, such as your lungs, heart, and circulatory system.

Additional barre benefits include reducing stress, increasing flexibility, and improving posture. 

As we get older, we need to consider the various ways we can ward off diseases like stroke, diabetes, and heart disease, and barre workouts can become a critical component in doing so.  

Where and How Can You Start Doing Barre Workouts? 

You can do barre workouts from the comfort over your very own home! Our certified barre instructor, Mary Aschieris, leads beginner barre workouts on our Mighty Health YouTube channel and in free, live classes at mightyhealth.com/events. 

So far, Mary has guided beginners through routines that focused on the thighs, glutes, arms, core, and back.  

You're probably wondering what you need to do to start. What do you wear? How should you prepare your body? Should you warm up with a walk or stretches? 

Mary will walk you though the fundamentals during each video session. All you need to get started is a countertop or the back of a chair.

Let's look at some highlights of Mary's barre videos to give you an idea of what you can expect from her easy-to-follow video classes. 

Thigh Strengthening Basics

In Mary's Thigh Basics video, she talks you through the basics of barre and how you can fast-track your comfort and confidence levels in this practice. Mary starts the video with a seated warmup that features breathing exercises and a full stretch to the ground, remaining in the seated position. She proceeds to help you understand some basic positions that will make your workout more effective, such as the tuck position. 

She begins the thigh-focused class, asking you to join her in various seated, standing, and ground-based exercises to strengthen your thighs in just under 11 minutes, ending with some gentle stretches. 

Beginner Arm Strength

It feels like most of us would love to improve our arm strength as we get older.

Mary welcomes you to the arm strength video, inviting you to join her in sculpting lean and toned arms, starting with some full-body seated and standing stretches. She discusses the best ways to focus on enhancing your arm muscles through isometric biceps work before pulling out the canned beans for some added weight. She includes several key upper body and arm exercises, including triceps extensions, arm extensions, front rows. 

Lower Back Strengthening

Back exercises are increasingly important as we get older because they help with decreasing lower back pain. It also helps build a strong foundation for mobility and balance to keep you steady on your feet. Mary guides beginners through quick lower back barre exercises which are a great way to eliminate stiffness and increase flexibility.

Join Mary In Her Ongoing Mighty Health Barre Series 

Mary continues to offer Mighty Health classes, helping you identify how mighty you are too. Subscribe to our Mighty Health channel to make sure you catch up on the barre classes and visit mightyhealth.com/events to RSVP for upcoming free classes. Best of all, you can use these videos daily to condition the part of your body you want to work on most that day. 

Let our Mighty Health team know how else we can help you start your barre practice and all the benefits you can expect to see. We can also help if you're having trouble getting started or you aren't experiencing the results you would like to. 

Looking for personalized fitness and nutrition guidance? Check out mightyhealth.com to learn how the Mighty Health app can seamlessly integrate into your daily routine!