after attending pure barre for 5 weeks, i feel way more flexible and ready to get back into my old workout routine, which i had abandoned for some time. i definitely hadn't planked for so long since x-country practice in high school, and i was actually able to do the splits at some point, which i'd never done in my life. pretty impressive for just a few weeks' worth of classes! since my last review, this pb studio has really stepped it up and gotten their routine down for the most part. aside from their many improvements, i've noticed that they've really started to form and nurture a community, which is so great! classes were packed for the first couple of weeks, to the point where you had to choose whether you wanted to be running into the wall during warmup or knocking elbows with another person. the evening classes, which, for the most part were the only ones i could attend, were especially full. however, as time passed, the attendance faded a little and the classes were a much more comfortable and realistic size, both in relation to the size of the studio and the instructor-student ratio. i also noticed that the majority of instructors explained the techniques well and demonstrated each move clearly. there were still some who didn't, or didn't do this consistently, which kind of made class feel a little like a ripoff, since even in the videos, you can follow along and see how exactly your posture should be, etc. instead, there were many times when all of us were just kinda copying each other, confused as to what we should be doing. there were a couple of weeks in the middle of my membership when i noticed that classes consistently had 2 instructors-- one leading the workout and one actively participating, which was great for us to check our form and make sure we were doing things correctly. i'm not sure if this was an intentional thing or if the instructors were just attending for their own benefit, but either way, it was helpful! i wish it continued, but it would probably be hard to get 2 instructors for every single class. one thing that i loved was the 'breaking down the barre' class, which slowed things down and picked apart techniques for certain moves. i really wish that more of these sessions had been offered closer to the grand opening rather than toward the end of/after my membership. i think everyone should attend one of these before their first pb class, or at least within the first week or so! having that better understanding of the nuances of each move maximizes the exercise, and the results. i realized that i had been doing a bunch of things wrong, and kinda felt that i had wasted a lot of my time since i had no clue i should have been making certain adjustments. of course, i understand that pb is a constant learning process, and the more you do it, the harder it gets. i'm sure i'll keep finding mistakes to correct and will hopefully keep improving! so what's the verdict? would i recommend pb to my friends? yes! and i have! it's just that it is so far from the med center, where most of my friends live, and all the classes are either really early in the morning or at the worst traffic times. my friends were interested but called me crazy for driving that far to work out haha. even though i happened to have a pretty flexible schedule last month, with classes at school only going till noon most days, i found it really difficult to find a good session time to attend. 5:00 and 6:35 were my only options but traffic turned what would normally be a 25min drive into a 40-60min drive-- one way. :/ that on top of a med school workload made it hard to attend classes consistently. more classes between 1-4 or after 7pm would be ideal! also, although the classes are advertised as 55-min sessions, in reality, they run anywhere from 65-80 minutes. at first, classes kept going over time, which caused subsequent classes to start late. a longer session is more bang for your buck, but if you're counting on being done by a certain time to make it to another commitment, or if you want a more efficient workout, this could be problematic, especially because there is no clock inside the room and no one ever leaves early. overall though, i felt that the pb classes themselves were a good use of my time. some sessions were definitely way more challenging than others and i left feeling 10x more alive, but others got very dull and boring. i think it mainly depended on who was teaching, but due to the limited session times that worked for me, i couldn't be picky about the instructor. aside from scheduling, drive time, and gas $$, i'm also not sure that i could go 3-4 days a week consistently for more than the 5 weeks i did. since the classes are 70% the exact same thing every time (and 30% exercises on rotation), it got sorta old and the adhd in me craved more variety. by the end, i had most of the routine memorized. i'm taking a little break for now for hot yoga and bodypump, but i still love pb and hope to be back!! read more