I’ve taken barre before. Hell, I’ve even taken 75-minute barre. But barreSHRED? Nah. Why not? Because it’s supposed to be fucking hard! And this bro doesn’t like to try hard, at anything really. He’s more of a chill bro. And barreSHRED has no chill.
But his wife just wouldn’t stop nagging him about taking class. She’s always like, “Stop eating. Work out. Go for a run. Put that burrito down. If you’re gonna sit, sit on the spin bike. Don’t eat all 20 McNuggets,” and on, and on, and on, and on… just, so many words. Words all day. An all-you-can-listen buffet of words from the wife.
The all-out nagging assault had worn me down, and then our girl Cassie surprised us by showing up for class. Cassie’s one of our barre teachers, and she’s super chill. Especially about stretching. You should take her class just to see how she “teaches” stretching. Cassie’s all like, “I guess you can stretch like this if you want, or not, I don’t really stretch, so you can just do whatever.”
Cassie also loves dogs, especially our dog Bunny.
And then, SHE gets started with a whole bunch of, “Oh, are you taking barreSHRED? You should totes take class!”
Christ, alright already. I’ll take stupid barreSHRED. What. A. Mistake.
Class started out alright. We started doing these squatty side to side things that honestly felt pretty good. “Felt pretty good” didn’t last long, though. You know shit is not going well when the first time you look up at the clock, only seven minutes have gone by.
Much of the class is a blur, but I do remember some lowlights. There were some pushups, but not normal pushups, because Callie was all like “normal pushups are for girls. You guys are my basic barre betches.” And so she made us do pushups with one hand on the ground, and the other hand on a fucking foam roller. The instability was crazy. Imagine trying to do pushups with one hand on an alligator, on a waterbed, and you get the idea.
Still, as much as the class sucked, the mirrors kept me going. Because man, when you see 25 lbs. of weight gain that went straight to your cheeks staring back at you as you sweat profusely, that shit will motivate you. So I pushed, and pushed, and pushed some more.
Class was two days ago. The next morning was a shitshow. My abs were so shot (we didn’t even do abs!) I couldn’t sit up, so I had to roll over and off the side of the bed to get up. Then my glutes gave out. The underbutt was insanely sore. Why do people pay money to do this?
I can’t wait for my next barre class.
the barre bro 