BY DANA HUGHEY, KYTX CBS 19

If you’ve ever wanted to tap into your inner ballerina, now you can. There’s a new barre workout in Tyler. It’s been popular in Dallas, Houston and other cities across the country.

Instructors say barre works for everyone — even for the flexibility-challenged.

Some athletes even practice it in the off-season to gain that flexibility and strength they need to do their job. It’s also the rage with celebrities and now you can see why the fitness trend is so popular.

If you long for a dancer’s physique — a long, lean body — barre might be an exercise you want to try.

“Personally, I really like it because I never got to be a ballerina when I was younger,” said Sarah Burton, barre instructor at Body Language Studio in Tyler. “You should expect to sweat a lot. You should expect your heart rate to get up.”

Ms. Burton teaches some of the new barre classes at Body Language studio in Tyler.

“Expect to be walking out a little taller because you have been cued to lift up and create some decompression in the spine as you are working the major muscle groups in the body, your glutes, hamstrings, your core, your quads,” she said.

The classes are a combination of ballet bar moves and Pilates principles.

“I think it is a safe way to continue moving when you are past 40,” said Kelly Hudson.

Ms. Hudson likes the way barre keeps her strong without building any bulk.

“I like how it teaches me to control my muscles, I like tightening the muscle and making it burn and then releasing because you feel like you have done some work in the deeper muscles that you don’t normally get to when you are just lifting weights,” she said.

A typical workout at the barre will include some floor-work with light hand weights, yoga straps and time at the bar.

“When we think about dance or ballet, we think about plies or little bitty squats or grand plies where we are having to use the big muscles of the leg,” Ms. Burton said. “So those are our calorie burners. We are working laterally, side to side, forward and back and in circles, all the while trying to maintain core control, all about belly 100 percent of the time.”

Lenzie Prince also teaches barre.

“It is much more challenging to me than anything I have ever done because it does take so much control,” Ms. Prince said.

She said don’t worry if you’re not as flexible or strong as you’d like.

“We can modify anything that we do in here,” she added. “As you progress, you are going to get more flexible and stronger.”

Barre is designed to give you that, plus joint stability and better posture which gravity tries to take away from us as we age.