Get In Line: Raising The Barre

Fitness buff and healthcare professional Mallika Parekh’s biggest peeve when she prepared to shift base from New York to Mumbai was the lack of emphasis on bone and muscle health among Indians. A fan of Physique 57, a New York-based barre workout that blends cardio, strength training, stretching and recovery, Parekh, who holds a double master’s in medical science and public health, decided to bring this down to Mumbai. “Indians have lower bone density than most other populations worldwide. Not only is this a powerful exercise regimen that is easy on your joints, but studies have proven that the method helps increase bone density, so I knew that the revolutionary fitness method would have a place in India, beginning in Mumbai,” she states. The Physique 57 method is designed to be a full-body workout that targets arms, thighs, glutes and the core. Regular workouts result in longer and leaner muscles. As for concerns about the toll it takes on your body, Parekh is quick to reassure, “It all falls within the parameters of what your body is designed to do. Our workouts fire up your body’s own natural strengthening and weight-loss mechanisms, kick them into high gear, and ultimately supercharge them so they become more powerful and efficient than ever before. Our innovative cardio and strength training sequences set to upbeat music use your own body weight as resistance and a ballet barre for support.”  If the guarantee of visible results in just eight classes doesn’t persuade you to give this a shot, the fact that it puts you in good company certainly will. The international client roster is said to include Reese Witherspoon, Demi Moore, Chrissy Teigen, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Denise Richards. And the response, she finds, has been both fantastic and inspiring. “Across the global Physique 57 community, one story that particularly stood out for me was of a cancer patient who was under treatment at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.  Her doctors informed her that she would need a stem cell transplant, and suggested that she spend six months getting her body physically strong to help her cope with this life-altering treatment. She decided to spend this time at a P57 centre five days a week, and her doctors told her that in all of their years of experience, they had never seen the physical transformation they saw in her after those six months, even before her stem-cell transplant. They were convinced that the physical strength that she developed helped tremendously in expediting her transplant recovery, which ultimately resulted in cancer remission. To me, it just doesn’t get any more convincing,” she ends.