It turns out two inches of movement is all you need to make your muscles unforgivably sore. This weekend, The Dailey Method, a studio built on the philosophy and muscle-lengthening exercises of ballet and pilates, opens on 44th Avenue and Tennyson Street in the Highlands.

My abs and I spent an hour with owner Carrie Krane last week in her brightly-lit studio, and came away happy and exhausted. The key to The Dailey Method is alignment, core activation, and a neutral spine. The classes focus on small, pulsing movements that are meant to tone and strengthen your muscles without overbuilding them, so that you look like a lean, powerful dancer.

And thank goodness that there’s lots of stretching, too. After sinking further into a plie and then standing up on your toes, you’ll need those small moments of reprieve and stretch to elongate some very tired limbs. Luckily, Carrie is one of the most attentive instructors I’ve come across. She helped me shift my hips, realign my feet, and bend forward enough to make a seemingly easy movement a lot harder when I did it correctly. My running legs felt looser and stronger (and, yes, sorer) from just from one session.

All classes this Saturday and Sunday are free and come with complimentary childcare (and food from Parallel Seventeen and the Juicing Tree!). For the schedule and to register, click here.

Best of all, as part of their pre-opening special, you’ll get six weeks of unlimited classes for only $100—a price that usually doesn’t get you far in this pilates/yoga/barre world—if you sign up by Sunday.

4342 Tennyson St., Unit A; 303-495-5260

—Image courtsey of Shutterstock