Hey friends! How are you? I hope you’re having a great morning so far. Today, I’m doing a couple of fitness consultation calls (wahoo!), putting the finishing touches on tomorrow’s podcast episode, and catching a strength workout at the gym. Lately, I’ve been focused on adding strength variety to my routine: heavy lower rep work at Telos, moderate rep and intensity at Orangetheory, and low weight, higher rep endurance work through BODYPUMP, Peloton, and Barre.

I found that I get the most benefits from my efforts when I include a mix of traditional hypertrophy work and endurance work. My muscles look and feel different, and it always keeps me challenged! (You can read more about the difference between traditional strength and endurance here.) As you guys know, I’m a huge fan of barre, but one of the top complains I hear about barre is that it doesn’t include very much cardio. Participants often like to go to classes for a calorie burn, and with barre, it can be fairly low. (The good news is that when you take a class, you FEEL it working, so it must be magical even though my Apple Watch doesn’t give it enough credit.) Many barre classes and studios have incorporated more variety in their classes, whether it’s through core and cardio-focused classes, or fusion classes that include spin bikes or Pilates reformers. I like it all