#bar class

                              When I first moved to New York, I went to Physique 57 a lot and I LOVED it.  I couldn’t particularly afford it then, any more than I can now, but somehow managed to go quite a bit. It was the workout that made me love working out – it was the first workout that I ever truly loved. I went for a few years pretty regularly, met some amazing people, changed the way I viewed exercise and then fell right off the bandwagon and into some other amazing fitness adventures. In the last few months though, I have started warming up to adding a bar-based class back into the mix of all of my workouts. So, whenever the opportunity presents itself to try one, I hop at the chance – especially where Physique 57 is concerned.

On Monday morning, bright and early, I headed to the Spring Street studio and it felt a little like going home. It is still a beautiful studio, staffed with incredibly nice and sweet people, who are also on top of things.  I checked in and went to the locker rooms to change and drop off my stuff – and was again completely confounded by the fact no one ever puts a lock on their lockers!  So weird. So after going through the rigmarole of looking for an actual free locker, I finally found one and dropped my stuff off, snapped my lock on and went to wait for my class to start.

I had chosen to take a beginner class because as strong and fit as I feel these days, bar classes have a way of kicking your ass in a very specific way that no other training quite prepares you for. I get that, so even though I used to take advanced classes - I knew that it had been so long that an intermediate class was even out of the question.  This was a VERY good call! Oh man. Really, anything called beginner shouldn’t be that hard! Damn. My class was with Chanelle Lagace, who I had never taken but who had started when I actually did go there and had heard amazingly good things about. People love her and I can see why.  She taught a great, challenging class and was really quick and helpful on corrections. I really LOVE corrections when it comes to a class like Physique because really, the movements are often so small, they need to be precise to be effective and I want a teacher who can tell when I am off. Chanelle had that in spades and was friendly when doing it.  I almost didn’t notice she had just made the movement three times harder! I was dripping sweat about midway through, which for me, is the sign of a good class! 

After class, I tooled around Soho a little before deciding it was such a clear, crisp fall morning that walking home over the Brooklyn Bridge would be the perfect end to what had been a perfect morning. And really, how often can you say that on a Monday?