Walking Into a Bar Doesn’t Mean What it Used To
I might have been a little bit disappointed when I found out that the Bar Method, coming to Inwood Village in early fall was not, in fact a more efficient technique for ordering beer but a new workout studio featuring–you guessed it–a ballet bar.
The chain was founded a decade ago in San Francisco by a former journalist and began franchising in 2008. The Inwood Village studio, the first in Texas (there’s 17 in California, plus a smattering in New York, New Jersey, and other states), is being launched by University Park resident and ’91 SMU grad Lisa Hennings.
Hennings, who danced professionally for a decade and was an instructor at the Dallas Yoga Center for years, started going to the Bar Method six years ago while living in San Francisco, just after she had one of her three children.
“I watched my body change in two months,” Hennings said. “In two months, my body was back to where it was before I was pregnant.”
Classes last an hour and consist of a warm-up, upper body toning with light weights, and push-ups before the bar comes into play. Then, using the bar, the workout targets muscle group by muscle group, working each to “complete exhaustion,” Hennings said. All the exercises are intense but are low impact and safe.
She also touts a “Bar Method high” that often follows workouts, the legality of which she did not address.
Hennings said she is filling a void with the Inwood Village studio, both personally and for the city. When she moved Dallas with her husband, Groovin’ on Granola’s “chief groovin’ officer” Tom Hennings, she was jonesing for a Bar Method fix. And Dallas needed the type of workout the Bar Method had to offer. A perfect fit.
