One of the reasons I got my hands on the new peloton barre class is because I’m recovering from a shoulder injury and I needed something low-impact. In this article, I will explain what is peloton barre class is and why you need to try one.
Overall, the peloton barre classes are ballet-inspired workouts that last between 10 to 45-minutes. They include bodyweight training in the form of dance isometric movements, as well as the elements of pilates and yoga. Think pirouettes and leg lifts.
One thing I immediately noticed is that peloton barre helped with my posture. Good body alignment provides positive nonverbal communication, where the slouched positions speak volumes to others about how you carry yourself.
What Is Peloton Barre?
I think that barre workouts are good because they work muscles in a non-traditional way. And as long as there’s gravity, anybody can benefit from doing bodyweight workouts.
As of now (Summer 2022), you can find over 120 barre classes on the peloton app. To find them, all you need is to head on to the “strength” category and use the “barre” filter.
How Does Peloton Barre Classes Work?
Peloton barre works by improving the way your body moves and breathes through core conditioning and deep muscle training. It targets the muscles that are responsible for respiratory function, lumbar stabilization, and the overall position of the body.
Here’s how it works.
Poor posture, prolonged sitting, inactivity, and reliance on modern conveniences can create weakness in the muscles around the core area.
Over time, this creates postural adaptations.
What is postural adaptation? In short, postural adaptation is the process where you acquire a position that you spend the most time in (e.g. sitting). That new position leads to a slouched posture with a rounded upper back.
Not only that.
This shift in biomechanics and range of motion changes the way we move and breathe.
Does peloton barre help with posture? Overall, the peloton barre helps with posture because it allows you to engage those deep postural muscles, decrease pressure on the low back, and restore optimal range of motion.
Muscles that help to keep our body aligned all day long are called postural muscles. They are capable of less force but can withstand mild efforts for longer (e.g. maintaining your erect position).
They are mainly made of type 1 “slow-twitch” endurance muscle fibers. They are not trained by a heavy load. They are trained by low resistance with a high number of reps.
Is peloton barre hard? As a whole, the peloton barre is hard but if you can do a basic yoga class then you can do a basic barre workout. The most challenging exercises from the barre will be the moves that your body is not used to doing.
Is Peloton Barre Effective?
As a whole, the peloton barre is effective and efficient because it trains both physical and mental health. It is designed to boost energy, build muscle, and improve range of motion. It also helps to improve balance and core stability.
You can definitively get fit from peloton barre because the main idea here is to develop core and lower body conditioning using the isolation exercises done with low resistance (body weight), but with high repetition volume.
What are isolation exercises? In short, the isolation exercises allow you to train one specific muscle group (e.g. glutes) for an extended period of time until you reach muscle fatigue. This increases time under tension and allows for metabolite build-up in the muscle, which signals for hypertrophy.
However.
The hypertrophy from barre workout is not like typical strength training with weights (more on that later).
Peloton barre helps to strengthen and tone your muscles without adding size. It includes a lot of floor strength, unilateral balance exercises, and flexibility yoga poses that help to improve body alignment and posture. This class is perfect for people who spend too much time behind their desks.
What I like about the peloton barre is that the typical class ranges from 10 to 30 minutes, which means you can do your workouts daily.
Also, high repetition and low resistance mean you won’t feel so beaten up the next day.
Is 30 minutes of peloton barre enough? 30 minutes of peloton barre is enough if you want to get your daily workout in without causing the body to overtrain. It is also a great alternative for the days when you recover from high-intensity interval rides or from long-distance rides.
This means you can do barre as your main workout or (for better fun) combine that with all other peloton workouts.
What Are The Advantages of Peloton Barre?
There are lots of benefits from doing ballet-style and dance exercises, especially if you haven’t done this type of class before. Apart from being super hard, it provides solid variety to your routine.
Here are the main benefits of doing peloton barre:
- Flexibility – Peloton barre has many components from yoga, which help to improve your mobility and range of motion. Of course, classes can be filtered by difficulty level so if you find that some moves are tought, just lower the bar.
- Improved strength – A lot of exercises require you to maintain a high rep count for 30 to 60 seconds or more. In the exercise physiology world, this is called metabolic stress. You train the muscle until you “feel the burn”.
- Better balance – Ally Love includes a lot of single-leg and one-side only exercises. In the fitness world, this is called unilateral balance training. Studies have shown that this type of workout has positive effects on neuromuscular reactions and balance recovery (Oliveira et al. 2013).
Peloton Barre For Weight Loss
Overall, the peloton barre is a good way to lose weight because high repetition movements elevate the heart rate and increase metabolic rate. This helps to burn calories in a relatively short time using minimum to no equipment.
Of course, make no mistake. Peloton barre won’t give you these heart-pumping effects as you get from HIIT classes.
Peloton rides will burn significantly more calories than barre. For best results, I highly recommend combining barre with cycling (or running). This will allow you to fill the gap (work on different muscles) and hit on both strength and cardio.
How many calories does peloton barre burn? As a whole, in one 30-minute peloton barre class, you can burn anywhere from 100 to 200 calories, depending on the exercises. If you want a more challenging session, try doing a 30-minute barre class with Ally Love followed by a 45-minute power zone endurance ride.
Doing barre class before your ride has a couple of benefits:
- It helps to fire up and activate the muscles that help to maintain your posture on the bike.
- It depletes muscle glycogen and allows you to burn more calories from fat.
For cycling, choose the class that has low intensity to maximize fat burns like an endurance ride or a low-impact ride. You don’t want to do a HIIT ride or FTP test after your barre session because it can lead to overtraining.
Peloton Barre vs Weight Training
The difference between peloton barre and weight training is that with barre you only use your own body weight, plus some additional equipment like resistance bands or light weights. You also use some non-traditional “equipment” like chairs for stability.
On the other hand, typical weight training includes doing compound exercises with heavyweights like barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, and machines. It targets the large superficial muscles that are responsible to fire up when you carry a big load.
Does peloton barre count as strength training? Overall, the peloton barre is a type of strength training because it helps to improve muscular strength and endurance. While it may seem easy, it still includes exercises like squats, lunges, planks, and even pushups.
Is peloton barre as effective as weight lifting? In short, the peloton barre is not as effective as weight lifting because compound movements with high resistance allow for a greater increase in metabolic rate and muscle fiber growth.
However, peloton barre is still a viable way to train on muscle strength, especially during injury, rehabilitation, or for people with limited mobility (e.g. seniors).
Can peloton barre build muscle? As a whole, peloton barre is focused to develop muscular strength but it also can build muscle, especially around hips and glutes. However, for optimal hypertrophy, it’s good to supplement barre classes with additional weight training programs like Crossfit, or Olympic lifting.
I also think that people who just look for a novelty can benefit from doing barre. If you find that your regular workouts become boring, adding a few barre classes can keep that fire alive.
Peloton Barre vs Pure Barre
The difference between peloton barre and pure barre GO is that peloton barre is only an addition to their wide fitness workouts library. Peloton generally specializes in indoor cycling and barre workouts are just a drop in the ocean compared to their cycling content.
On the other hand, pure barre is a well-established fitness franchise with over 500 locations across North America.
They specialize in barre fitness workouts done in-person, and since 2021 they also expanded their brand to be available on-demand and live from home.
Is peloton barre better than pure barre? Overall, the pure barre is a much better option than the peloton barre because they have hundreds of different barre classes, online workouts, programs, and collections. They also offer multiple week-long tutorials for beginners that want to start with ballet dance training.
Download the pure barre app and check them out.
This company is part of Xponential Fitness, which is a parent company for other brands (e.g. Cyclebar). I’ve written an article where I compare “peloton vs cyclebar“, which I recommend you read.
Peloton Barre vs Beachbody Barre Blend
Peloton barre and Barre Blend are completely different types of workouts but are based on similar ideas; deliver ballet-inspired workouts at home. The barre blend is an 8-week program where you do barre classes exclusively for 5 days per week.
It is a combination of ballet, pilates, HIIT, and resistance training. It focuses on legs, abs, and glutes, with a few arms exercises. It starts from the introduction of basic ballet moves, and as the weeks go by, you start to get more difficult and more intense sessions.
Beachbody barre blend also comes with meal plans and modifications so it’s suited for all fitness levels.
On the other hand, the peloton barre is a handful of bodyweight workouts that you take, without any schedule or program.
Who Is Peloton Barre Good For?
Overall, the peloton barre is worth it because it gives a new opportunity for a fun and challenging workout. However, this is a very feminine class so people who like to lift heavy weights and grow muscle (most men) can find this session intimidating.
I think this class is perfect for:
- Beginners – People who love the idea of ballet-training and just want to try basic exercises, before joining any in-person studio.
- Yogis – People who like yoga and pilates and are looking for a novel way to train using mainly their bodyweight.
- Professionals – People who spend too much time seated (call center, administrative, drivers, IT, receptionists) which are in one fixed position and need to work more on their posture.
- Injured people – Everyone who is coming back from injury and is not ready yet for regular weight training or HIIT cardio workout.
How many peloton barre classes does it take to see results? On average, it may take anywhere from 3 to 6 months to see results from peloton barre, as long as you combine those classes with a healthy diet. I recommend doing 3-4 classes per week, in conjunction with regular cardio like cycling or walking.
Is Peloton Barre On The App?
Overall, the peloton barre is on the app which means all members (including peloton digital) can use those classes. The peloton instructors that teach barre are Hannah Corbin and Ally Love, which both specialize in dance and mobility.
Conclusion
The peloton barre is becoming more popular than pilates. I see more classes are being added, however, these classes are only uploaded in batches of 5-10 workouts at once.
Anyway, this is still a viable well-balanced workout that can get you in shape, and if you’re looking for something that targets your core and can go hand in hand with other rides, I highly recommend trying it.