Exploring the Lotte Berk Exercise Lineage on DVD
Comparison of Lotte Berk Method, Bar Method, Squeeze, & Callanetics
May 8, 2009
Russian dancer Lotte Berk taught her exercise method in London, where her signature ballet-inspired moved and yoga-like stretches gained a cult following. Her students took the method in various directions, but while it flourished in boutique studios throughout the US, the highly effective body-sculpting technique found a niche in the home fitness market.
Benefits of Lotte Berk for Home Workouts
Berk's exercises are, for the most part, simple, challenging, easy to understand, and relatively safe. Unlike Pilates and yoga, which can require an instructor's spotting and guidance, barre workouts like Lotte Berk's technique lend themselves to home workouts, even for beginners. Exercisers can achieve measurable results in a short time, which is great for motivation, and the exercises themselves are unique and fun.
Most barre workouts require little space, little equipment (a set of 1 to 3 pound dumbbells, a mat, and a chair are all that's needed in most of the DVDs listed here), and often little time.
Callanetics
Callan Pinckney was the first to make Berk's techniques popular on home video. Her first video, Callanetics: 10 Years Younger in 10 Hours, took the 1980s by storm and is still popular, if dated. More recently, the tried-and-true Callanetics exercises have been redesigned with a more current anatomical focus, in DVDs like CardioCallanetics and CallaneticsEvolution.
Callanetics DVD workouts tend to be gentle, slow-paced, repetitive (with up to 100 "pulses" per exercise), and deceptively challenging.
Lotte Berk Method
Lydia Bach brought Lotte Berk's work to New York with a bestselling book, Awake! Aware! Alive!: Exercises for a Vital Body, and she founded the Lotte Berk Method studios. A set of four DVDs, Basic Essentials, Muscle Eats Fat, Hip Hugger Abs, and High Round Assets provide 30-minute workouts suitable for beginners and more advanced exercisers.
Lotte Berk Method DVDs have an upbeat, urban New York style, clear instruction, and effective exercises.
Bar Method
Founder Burr Leonard released two DVDs, Fat Free and Designer Sculpting, providing 45-minute workouts. They contain some of the most popular and effective Lotte Berk exercises, such as the Pretzel. Two newer DVDs, Bar Method: Change Your Body and Bar Method: Accelerated Workout, offer almost hour-long workouts for beginning and advanced exercisers, respectively.
Bar Method DVDs are well-cued with careful set-up time and a formal feel.
Squeeze with Tracy Effinger
Though even advanced exercisers can get a great workout from a beginner DVD, Tracy Effinger has focussed on intensifying Lotte Berk's techniques. Squeeze is a well-organised DVD containing a long and short workout option as well as supplemental exercises, so it's highly versatile. Other DVDs include Squeeze: Lower Body Workout, and Squeeze Stronger, a Lotte Berk/strength training hybrid.
Tracy Effinger DVDs are fast-paced, unrelenting, very challenging and highly motivational.
