Muscles Magazine

Ever heard your barre instructor preach about how you're just one plié away from looking like the next Victoria's Secret model—all you need to do is lengthen your muscles? Hate to break it to you, ladies, but there's no such thing as "long" muscles.

While your muscle fibers do naturally have elasticity that allows for them to stretch and shorten in order to move (and these fibers can hypertrophy, or grow larger), you actually want to avoid overly stretching before a workout. When your muscle is overly relaxed, it can't produce the force needed for various exercises. (By the way, You Don't Need Big Muscles to Have Strong Muscles.) Imagine trying to sprint uphill after hitting the spa all day—that's what it feels like to your muscles when you get into a deep stretch pre-sweat.

So why does it seem like every barre instructor talks about lengthening your muscles? Well, for one, we all have an idea of what that looks like: ballerina-worthy posture and muscular definition in your legs, arms, and abs. And these classes do emphasize the muscle groups that help achieve this physique—it's just not done by literally lengthening your muscles.

But you can get that long, lean look. Here's how.

1. Keep up your Barre routine. Workouts that emphasize high reps of light weights help to strengthen muscle fibers that specialize in endurance (compared to power or all-out strength). These muscle fibers tend to help you sculpt a slimmer look too. Moves like soft sumo squats or standing reverse leg lifts are what you want to focus on. And limit your rest time when you're doing exercises on your own. Staying below 30 seconds for recovery time will keep your heart rate elevated and you'll continue to burn calories—even as you sip your water. (We've rounded up The Best and Worst Barre Exercises.)

2. Up your cardio. It takes more than one type of workout to produce total-body toning. After all, as your body becomes familiar with moves, your muscles don't have to work as hard. Enter the dreaded plateau. The more you mix it up, the harder your muscles have to work (causing a higher calorie burn).