Ten Tips for Boosting Your Results From The Bar Method, Part 2

Last month I gave you the first five of ten tips for boosting your results from the Bar Method. The manager of my home studio in San Francisco, Kate Grove, and I first shared these tips with our students during a student workshop at my home studio in San Francisco. The next three tips are the ones we gave our students for the exercises they do midway through the Bar Method workout.

Tip #6: During “standing seat,” find vertical on your body.

Standing seat can transform your body, if you do it in the right form. Here’s how you can be sure yours is correct: Imagine a vertical line stretching from your ears, through your shoulders, hips and working thigh, and keep these body parts centered on the line. Staying vertical during this exercise is easier said than done. Your mind gets the idea, but your body instinctively craves a more comfortable stance. Lose focus for a moment, and when you snap back to attention you might discover that your head has dropped forward, your seat as arched back, your torso has leaned one way or the other, or your working thigh has wandered off the line. How do you avoid falling out of vertical? First use the mirror to check that your torso is upright. Next, keep re-gripping both sides of your glutes, and remind your lower back to relax. Maintain a vertical spine, and finally, keep your working knee unwaveringly under your hip (give or take an inch). This level of good form requires self-honesty and determination, but it’s worth the effort. When you succeed, standing seat will give you gorgeous posture and could become your favorite killer exercise.

Tip #7: During “flat-back,” don’t worry about a little “pooching out.”

If you’re like many students, you’re hesitant to take the option of lifting both legs during flat-back because whenever you try to raise them, your abs push out. In fact, a little pooching during flat-back is a natural stage your abs go through on their way to getting flatter. Pooching out usually happens when your two deepest abdominal muscles are weak. They are your transversus abdominis (“TA”) and your internal oblique. When you exhale sharply, these muscles pull in your belly. If they’re weak, they don’t pull in effectively, which allows your ab muscles that are on top, including your powerful six-pack muscle (the rectus abdominis) to contract outwards. The good news is that simply by vigorously exhaling, you engage your deep abs. When you vigorously exhale and add the weight of your legs to the effort, you strengthen these muscles. So even if you start with a little pooching out, you’ll end up with flatter abs by challenging your deepest ones during every class.

There’s another reason your abs might be misbehaving during flat-back. Your four ab muscles tend to store fat in between their layers, and that fat can bunch up when you contract them. In either case, raising both legs during flat-back, even if your abs pooch out a few inches, is harmless and will ultimately help you achieve flatter abs. Simply put, the more you work your deep abs during flat-back, the stronger and flatter they’ll get in relation to your other abs muscles, and the more “belly fat” you’ll burn.

One caveat: if you’re very over-weight or have very weak abs, they may pop forward more than three inches when you raise your legs. In that case, hold back on the lifting both at the same time until you lose some weight or get stronger.

Finally, if you just can’t lift your legs no matter how hard you try, sit on one-to-three “risers,” which are firm cushions designed to raise you up a few inches from the floor. If you’re tall and need to use risers, go to a stall-bar, lay a riser against it, and place three of them under you. By sitting up higher, you’ll be able to get your legs airborne and derive the full benefits of doing flat-back.

Tip #8: During curl, imagine your favorite super-cut celebrities doing ab work.

Students have been known to say that Bar Method ab work is “worse than childbirth.” Maybe so, but this thought is not the most motivating one to have in mind when getting through the last reps during “curl” section! Switch it out with mental picture of a hunky super star working his way through is own ab-sculpting routine.
Stars grunt through hundreds of crunches a workout just as you do, so picture the abs of celebrities like David Beckham, Matthew McConaughey or Ryan Reynolds doing ab exercises such as the Bar Method’s “high curl” or “clam.” Your “inspiration” hunk will get you into the spirit of embracing a macho zeal for the burn!

If you just plain have trouble staying in the burn, try this approach: Devote just as much energy to the “back” part of each crunch as you do to the “forward” of it. This techique keeps you tightly in the muscle as you proceed through the reps, and doubles your benefits along the way.

Next month: Tips for finding your inner dancer during the last part of class.