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TSG SPOTLIGHT: Lis Halfpapp and Fred DeVito, Founders of Exhale Spa

Fred DeVito and Lis Halfpapp, by Melinda DiMauro Photography.

Barre studios began appearing in our New Jersey communities eight years ago and caught on quickly with the allure of long graceful muscles, good posture and the significant results students were experiencing in a relatively short period of time. With the workout’s combination of ballet, yoga and Pilates, it became very popular for all ages and the perfect choice for a society where so many of us spend our days hunched over devices.

With the hundreds of barre programs that are now available, some may think of the workout as a new fad. However, Fred DeVito and Lis Halfpapp, the founders of Exhale - the purveyor of barre classes, spa therapies, and well-being programs - have been teaching barre classes for over 36 years. 

Lis and Fred’s partnership and love of fitness began over 40 years ago when they met at their New Jersey high school, Lis a cheerleader and Fred a football player. Having danced since she was a young child, Lis began teaching ballet in her teens and in 1980, after graduating from the Hartford School of Ballet Teacher Training program, she saw a Lotte Berk Method ad in the NY Times looking for former dancers to teach at the first barre studio in the U.S. on the Upper East Side of New York City.

Lotte Berk, a German ballerina, created the barre technique incorporating strength-training, dance, orthopedic back exercises, and Hatha yoga rolled into an intense, hour-long mind-body workout. She named it Lotte Berk Method and taught it to a devoted following in London in the ‘60s and ‘70s.    

I was fortunate to be able to sit down with Fred and Lis and ask them about their journey with barre fitness. As a student of their Core Fusion classes I already knew Fred and Lis to be extremely passionate and dedicated instructors, but I learned from our interview that they are also truly two of the kindest and most humble visionaries I’ve had the pleasure of meeting.

TSG:  Tell us about your health and wellness path - how did you turn your passion into this career?

Lis:  I began ballet at the age of five and as a child I decided that whatever I end up choosing as a career, it should be something I love to do because I knew I’d be spending a lot of time doing it. I continued dancing and performing and became a cheerleader in high school. I knew how good I felt every time I took a dance class and I wanted to share that with others.

Fred:  I was a high school and college athlete and I studied health and physical education in college. I became a public school teacher in PE and health right out of college in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. At that time Health and PE classes were the extent of the well-being arena. I gradually worked my way into personal training and then had a chance to begin working at Lotte Berk Method when they needed someone to work the front desk. The studio was for women only and in order to get my foot in door I had to be the receptionist for a few months. When they eventually allowed me to become a teacher, I officially became the first male barre teacher in the world. That was in 1984.

Lis and Fred in their Summit, NJ studio, Melinda DiMauro Photography.

TSG:  Even though you have been teaching barre classes since the ‘80s, the barre workout did not become well known until the 2000s. The Core Fusion workout you developed for Exhale is based on the Lotte Berk Method you taught for 20 years. How is it different than the technique you originally taught?    

Fred: We learned a lot in those 22 years at Lotte Berk Method and when we decided to move on, we understood what worked and what was missing because LBM was a very specific technique that didn't allow for much wiggle room. Once we left LBM we dove deeply into the study of pilates, yoga, psychical therapy, exercise science and functional fitness, and realized all the missing pieces to a well-balanced program.

Lis: Things are always changing and evolving in the movement world as they should, and since the first day of Core Fusion 14 years ago, our class has evolved into a different place as well. We like to work with muscular confusion so that the muscles are sharp and react to what they are being given. Instead of having a scripted class, we like to shake up the pattern. There are sections of the class that will always remain the same, but within these sections there are many varieties that our teachers choose from so each class is different and the muscles can be challenged, and this stems from classical ballet technique training.

“Someone who takes a barre class will be burning more calories 24 hours a day than someone who takes a spin class and this will help with weight control and reducing inches.”

TSG:  After running 30+ miles a week for 30 years, I now attend barre classes 4 times a week and my body has never been this toned and strong. Can you explain why 4 hours each week in a barre studio can put me in the best shape of my life when we’ve heard for so many years that a cardio workout such as running is the most results efficient workout?

Fred: There are different types of cardio. There is running or riding a bike where you will maintain a 75% heart rate for 45 minutes to an hour - a fat burning cardio people need in their lives. When a barre class is taught with energy, pace and flow, it is an interval training type of cardio where you are are doing high intensity work for a time, and then lower intensity stretching.  

Most people who take barre classes, and only barre classes on a regular basis, maintain a very healthy heart and cardiovascular system because if it’s taught the right way, it’s great training for your heart. It’s not the same as running or biking - you don’t get that same endorphin rush that you get for longer duration activities.

But do you need both? Yes. Do you need more of one than the other? Yes. You need more barre because barre is strength and flexibility training. It is the strength training that improves your muscle density and your muscle density is what improves your resting metabolic rate which is the rate at which you burn calories at rest. And you only get that improvement from strength training, not from cardio. So when people take a spinning class, they may burn 400 or 500 calories in an hour and the other 23 hours of the day they go back to a resting metabolic rate that is subpar. Someone who takes a barre class will be burning more calories 24 hours a day than someone who takes a spin class and this will help with weight control and reducing inches.

It is very important to give yourself enough time to learn the barre technique. The barre technique is all about the fine details and improving them. When you are in the right position and working with high intensity, there is no way that you will not get cardio benefits - you will be breathing heavily, sweating profusely, you will be building strength and getting cardio work at the same time. It can be compared to sprint training - sprinting and walking vs. strengthening and stretching.  It is a very intense heart strengthening technique which prepares you for any other sport.

Lis: We find that when new students come to us who have been used to only cardio, such as runners, they find our workout very challenging. In our Core Fusion class at Exhale we really push pace and flow to maintain heart rate and make it an intense workout. If a barre instructor doesn’t understand pace and flow, you may leave class feeling you haven't had a good workout. We pride ourselves on how we train instructors to teach this well.  

Exhale’s Summit, NJ studio, Melinda DiMauro Photography.

“These women never seemed to age physically or physiologically and even today the same women are with us and it is as if our classes are the fountain of youth.”

TSG:  Describe your “ah-ha” moment when you felt you were succeeding at what you do.

Fred:  One of the reasons we knew we had to move on from LBM was because the owner didn't want to expand the business. There were two studios - one in New York City and one in Bridgehampton. We taught a very targeted group of women - Upper East Side women and NY City business women. We knew we had something special because we saw how those students were affected by what we do - how their bodies were ageless. As they aged numerically these women never seemed to age physically or physiologically and even today the same women are with us and it is as if our classes are the fountain of youth because they are now in their 60s and 70s and they don’t look any different than when they were in their 40s and 50s.

We had a LBM student approach us (now our CEO, Annbeth Eschbach) with her idea for Exhale - to expand and take the classes nationwide, and Lis and I loved her idea. In 2003 we expanded outside of NYC to Boston. Once we opened Boston, we realized we really had something we could share with the world and that gave us so much fuel to keep expanding this business. In New York, we always had a group of teachers that we could stay on top of and watch the quality control, but  it was something we worried about once we opened Boston, Chicago and then Dallas. We realized that the way to maintain quality without being present comes from training the leaders correctly and holding them accountable. This was another ah-hah moment when we knew we could scale and not loose quality or be diluted.

Lis:  We opened our 30th property with Bermuda last year and have 170 teachers across the country and over 50,000 students a month nationwide in our barre classes alone. Students are seeing results and teachers are teaching on brand. We are not a franchise - we own all the studios under one umbrella and we know every teacher in every studio in every location nationwide. We find it so remarkable that the barre industry has grown out of that one studio on Madison Avenue to where it is today with Pure Barre, Bar Method, Barre3, and a plethora of others. It has tickled me with happiness to see how it has mushroomed into what it is today.

TSG:  Describe your philosophy about food, exercise and a life well lived.

Lis: Moderation.

Fred: 80/20. 80% of the time I’m good and 20% I cheat. A lot of exercise professionals are very strict - vegan and no alcohol which is no fun. I’m Italian so it’s not realistic for me. I love my red wine with dinner, I enjoy a steak and a burger once in awhile, I make my own pizza - just all in moderation. Lis makes her own desserts from scratch. It’s enjoying life - we work so hard and exercise so that we can enjoy life. That is why during our Exhale retreats in Bermuda and Turks and Caicos we serve great meals and great wine!

TSG:  A perfect day off?

Lis:  A leisurely breakfast, with a visit to the beach (the Hamptons), quiet recreational time, and being able to spend time with Fred.  

Fred:  Being with Lis. We spend a lot of time apart so it makes the time we do spend together that much more important and meaningful. We’ve been married 33 years and we don’t take each other for granted.                                      

TSG:  The project you are most proud of?

Lis:  Our Barre Teacher Training Program. When we started Exhale we only trained teachers to work at Exhale, but then three years ago we decided to open up the teacher training to anyone because the industry was expanding and we wanted to educate as many people as we could on how to teach barre. We now train teachers around the world and are about to embark on offering online barre teacher training. We are very proud of how many people outside the walls of Exhale we train to either be teachers or to help gain better knowledge of barre because a lot of barre students take the program to improve their knowledge - not necessarily to teach.

Exhale’s Turks + Caicos location.

TSG:  What is next?

Lis:  I hope to teach until I’m in my 90s as Lotte did (if people will still come to my class!). We have been growing alongside our students and have seen them through many life changes such a marriage, kids, even grandchildren now, and I want to continue to be a part of their lives. It feeds my soul.

Fred:  We want to continue to open more properties, expand our teacher training and to have more of an impact on as many people as we can touch until we get to the point where we want to sit back and get more into our hobbies. I’ve been a  jazz bass player all my life - I love music and I used to preform professionally and there will probably come a time when I want to perform again, but until then we want to help people understand that this is a lifestyle, not just an exercise class.

Exhale Spa Summit | 7 Bank Street, Summit, NJ | 908.206.1102