Sunday, 01/13/08

Chip Shots: Friendship blossoms into new exercise method

FRANKLIN — Suzanne Bowen and Leah Sarago go to the same church.

For three years people kept telling the fitness instructors that they had to meet, but they never did. Until last fall. Now the two women — who look like they could be sisters — are teaching an exercise class together at Prairie Life Fitness Center in Cool Springs. "I took Leah's class back in September," Bowen said. 

"I'm from New York, and she moved from L.A. I'm going, 'OK, this is the girl,' because it was so similar to what I did." In November, the two instructors who now call Williamson County home collaborated to form a new class for women, the Barre Body Method. "

The method is based on the movements of modern and classical dance, but it's not a dance class," Bowen said. The method also incorporates the principles of yoga, pilates and orthopedic stretching. "I worked for a studio in New York City called Lotte Berk Method, and my training came from there." Sarago, who lives in Franklin, said the Barre Method (www.barrebodymethod.com) transforms a woman's body to a very feminine physique.

"So we take what a woman has, whatever their body type is, and we just elongate it and make more feminine lines to it," Sarago said. "And we (strive for) more compact muscles."Bowen, a Spring Hill resident, believes many women are tired of the traditional forms of fitness such as weightlifting."They're developing, not masculine, just really cut muscles," Bowen said. "And women are wanting that long, lean feminine look now. They want to look like a woman, and this (method) helps them achieve that in a pretty quick way."

Many of the exercises in the Barre Method involve the use of ballet bars attached to the walls of the exercise room."It allows the women to use their body weight to the maximum of potential to train their bodies," Sarago said. "So we don't use weights on the legs. Using the bar you can pull away and get yourself in positions where you can really work those muscles as deep as we work them."

Sarago said the women in their classes have been able to lose weight quickly and tone their bodies overall. Bowen and Sarago kidded that their clients have become addicted to the class.

New forms of exercise are nothing new in the fitness world, which seems to reinvent itself on a daily basis. Infomercials bombard television viewers with new exercise methods, fitness machines and workout DVDs that are often promoted by celebrities.

"The fitness industry is consistently looking for something new and something that will catch people's interests," Sarago said. "A lot of times it is a very short-term success for that particular thing, depending on what it is. It's basically what can be the easiest next thing to do that will get you the most results."

Bowen's husband, Levi, also likes to stay in good shape. In 2000 he won Treasure Island, New Zealand's version of Survivor.

"That's how he got to America," Suzanne said. "He traveled around the world, and he has family in the music industry here. He ended up doing publicity here. He had to kill a shark with a spear on the show. They were just hungry. It wasn't a big one. When he was on the show, it was more about survival — survival of the fittest. I think they ate grubs."

The couple met in Franklin on a blind date, and they lived in New Zealand after getting married before returning to the States.