09 Oct RoundBack Defined
I bitch a lot about how a barre class needs to have an under the barre section. Specifically RoundBack! RoundBack is WHY one should be doing the class. as it’s the absolutely point! Also Under the Barre but more specifically RoundBAck is the most unique part of the class. This is why I went so far as to make it the Logo of BarSculpt. Do yourself and your clients a favor... DO NOT leave it out!
Today I got a text from a teacher I trained. Yes she no longer works at my studio, but still teaches. She mentioned that after reading my Rant blog, she now needed to know (or be reminded) WHY RoundBack is so important and WHY the placement in the class matters.
I love questions! They help me know what y’all need to know. So todays post which was going to be about my climbing Mt. Washington this weekend, will wait (which is fine as I may need a few more days to be able to walk without my calves shooting knives at me and maybe my outlook will be sunnier).
RoundBack is placed at the exact 30 minute mark of class. This is because we have hopefully spent the first 30 minutes warming up, fatiguing the thigh and glute muscles while also opening up the front of the body (hips and abdominal muscles). So our entire body is warm but more importantly our entire pelvis (both front and back, side to side) is warm. In this warm state we want to find more length (think split for your spine.. you may not be able to do it well or even at all, but you KNOW it’s working). So we lean up against the wall and pull our legs up over our hips. ONE may think that we are intentionally rounding the back... that is NOT the case. We are actually only rounding the back because for most humans it’s impossible to have a straight spine and have your ankles above your hips. But we are fighting for a straight back and straight legs. We are pulling up and out of our hip joints creating the feeling of length toward the head and toes. We want to lengthen the chest, upper back, hamstrings, outer hips and thighs and even the upper abdominals. This shape builds bone density in the pelvis as it is not very often that we hold all our weight on those bones. Yoga teachers could look at RoundBack exercise like the upside down version of Downward facing dog... Yoga and Pilates were created by men. Barre was founded by Lydia Bach and her teacher Lotte Berk both females, so it is no surprise that in barre we keep the heaviest part of our bodies as our anchor (just like men do in downward facing dog... chest down). But one does want to ground the bones down to the ground so the legs can rise up.
RoundBack comes before FlatBack so that when we back our bodies back into the wall.. the wall can act like a cookie cutter and lengthen our bodies in the posture we want to maintain all day. Open chest, ears over shoulders over hips and pelvis Neutral.
For more details or if this creates more questions that it answers... please let me know. You should also check out my videos on this site. You can sign up for 30 days for NO charge and it’s only $5 a month after that. These exercises and more are detailed. If you have been trained by me, or want to be we have a more in-depth section of the videos that are $20 a month. Please email for more details!
Best,
Leslie
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