A 24-minute workout that makes even light weights feel super-spicy

Back in my 20s when I was a health magazine editor, a publicist for a popular chain of barre studios offered me an unlimited class pass, and being an underpaid 20-something New Yorker with lots of free time, I took her up on it. For a few months, I attended two or three barre classes per week, alongside very fancy, very thin, very tan white ladies with expensive hair, gigantic engagement rings, and those designer bangles that I think actually have a tiny key you have to use to lock and unlock them around your wrists? Wild. It was…not the friendliest vibe.

Anyway, these classes were an interesting form of torture. We did the tiniest movements with wee little weights, and yet after just a few reps of each exercise I felt like my arms or legs were straight-up about to fall off. I could barely make it down the subway stairs to get home. The burn was wild! But: I remember taking a trip a few weeks into my barre era and having to ask for help putting my suitcase into the overhead compartment on the airplane. I’d been exercising for a few years by this point and had never felt so weak. I had pretty ripped arms, but they seemed… useless? Compared to lifting heavier weights through a full range of motion, barre didn’t seem to yield noticeable muscle strength. (This article gets into a bit more detail about why that might be, but adds that many barre instructors are now including full-ROM exercises in addition to the pulses, so that’s cool.)

All this to say, it feels very funny to me to be bringing you a workout that involves tiny little pulses. I do not believe tiny little pulses are the whole meal, for sure. And yet, because your muscles remain engaged the entire time (hence the burn!) they are a great way to fully fatigue your muscles and build endurance, especially when you combine them with exercises that load your muscles through a full range of motion.

This also means that adding little pulses can be a really good way to get more out of an exercise that you don’t have quite heavy-enough weights for. Maybe you can normally do a tricep kickback with a 10-pound dumbbell, but you’re visiting your mother-in-law* and she only has 2-pounders — pulse those kickbacks out and trust me, your triceps will be utterly screaming.

I’ll add here: If you love barre classes, I love that for you. You know I never want to let what’s optimal get in the way of what’s doable, or what motivates you to be active on a regular basis. (I’ll sometimes do a quick 15 or 20-minute barre video when the day has completely snuck away from me and I want to squeeze in a little movement before my kids come home.) I might gently encourage you to pick up some heavier weights when possible, but please do not let my personal opinion on barre dissuade you from continuing to pulse your little heart out. Okay?

On to the workout. A gentle but firm reminder that this is your time, and if you don’t have the time or energy for the full shebang, you have full permission to skip the warmup, cooldown, and/or any rounds of the circuit you like.

*My actual mother-in-law actually owns reasonably heavy weights, so this is just a random and not-real-life example, I promise!