Me reflecting back to my first class back in 2010. Thanks Neeta @neetaphotography for this shot back in 2017.
I’ll always remember my first Pilates class. Just like my first kiss, it was awkward, weird, I didn’t know what to do with my hands, I held my breath a lot and I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterwards.
I almost didn’t go back after my first class. I mean I loved it yes, but man, the teacher was telling me so much stuff… like, how to squeeze my butt (‘don’t you just clench the living daylight out the top of your legs’!!), pull my stomach in, relax my shoulders (‘it’s not my shoulders that need relaxing lady, it’s my brain that’s fried from all these things I have to think about’), do something with my ribs that I just didn’t quite comprehend how I’m going to move a body part that is made out of bone and then also now she’s trying to tell me how to breathe?! Whoa.
But, never one to walk away from a challenge, plus the promise of 6 pack abs (the friend from my old work who swore to me that Pilates was the only thing she’d ever done that got her visible abs), I knew I’d be back to conquer this ‘Pilates thing’.
This is most definitely not the first time i did the Stomach Series. But you get the jist of the buuuuurn! Thanks Gemma @hudlow.photography for this shot last year.
The first time I did the Stomach Series, or the Series Of 5, I knew I was on to a good thing. How can five movements bring about so much delightful torture? I remember thinking, what a waste of years and years, trying to do 300 crunches a night on my bedroom floor as a teenager, thinking that that was the answer to some ‘bikini body’. It’s all about precision of movement. Do it right and quality will trump quantity every. single. time.
Thanks to @wellness_by_norah for this. Nailed it.
The first time I farted in class doing the Rolling Like A Ball exercise I wanted the world to swallow me up, I was so embarrassed. Thankfully my gorgeous teacher didn’t notice, or else she was so used to it and just ignored it. I’m sure it was the latter. Now that I’ve been around Pilates for 10 years, I know that if any exercise is going to make you fart, it’s that one. I’ve lost count of the amount of farts from clients in class I’ve had to ignore myself. Joseph Pilates himself talked about his exercises being like a massage of the internal organs. It meant you were truly working from the inside out. And it’s the inside or the deep stabilisers of our centre that we are particularly concerned with working in Pilates. Now I just tell those clients, ‘hey, no stress, you’re doing it right when a fart escapes’ ;-)
The first time I really connected to my powerhouse (centre/core whatever you want to call it). It was like an Ah Ha moment. The pennie dropped. ‘Oooohhh so this is what it feels like’. How to describe it… like I was zipped up. Supported. Like someone was inside me hugging my organs and muscles. I especially remember, after babies, how much I appreciated the skill of being able to feel like I could physically put back the pieces of the puzzle that were my insides. Childbirth made my insides feel like they were floating around inside me looking for a place to call their home, not connected to anything, just floating aimlessly inside my skin. So weird. Thank F for Pilates with that ol’ chestnut. Who knows where my intestines might have ended up without it.
The first time I felt the effects of missing a class. I thought Pilates was just a way of keeping fit. When I would miss a week here or miss a couple of classes there, sometimes I would just make up for missing it by going for an extra run or do an extra class at the gym that week. Then I realised, actually, this Pilates thing is keeping me together. When I miss a Pilates class it was making running harder, and I wasn’t recovering from the gym as quick. Hmmmm interesting.
The first time I realised Pilates was making me a better human. I think this didn’t really occur until after kids. Of course I have known for ages how good exercise makes you feel, the endorphins, the reduction of stress on the brain, mental alertness and all that great stuff. But once you are in the fiery pits of sleep deprivation like you’ve never experienced before, and you would do anything to have 30 minutes of time to yourself without little gritty, grubby hands all over you and 16 cups of coffee is probably bordering on too much, holy hell, do you learn the benefits of moving the body and focusing the mind, it’s all in the mind to muscle baby… centred, purposeful movement is life changing. It reminds you that you can use your mind and body for great things. (
Love these cheeky monkeys. Pic @hudlow.photography
Image from Vivemasblog
The first time I realised that Pilates never actually gets any easier. About 6 months after starting Pilates, I thought, why does this not feel any easier? Am I doing it wrong? Well firstly, we are our own worst enemy, nothing like a bit of competition with yourself. Secondly, it’s human nature to look for the negatives, once upon a time it would have saved our skins to be on the lookout for the danger/the negative/ the baddies. Hello, Wooly Mammoth, you can’t catch me, I’m outta here. Fast forward to now and we still hold a negativity bias, basically, humans tend to focus on the negatives over the positives. Back to Pilates, my teacher was always really good at highlighting how far I had come. ‘Remember when you couldn’t roll up off the ground?, remember when you could only do this on the yellow springs and now you’re on the purple springs?, remember when you had to rest between every rep?’…..hmmm yeah, ok , good point, thanks. The trick with Pilates is that as you learn more (eg, see paragraph above about connection to powerhouse, hello AHA moment), you learn how to use the right muscles, sometimes these muscles aren’t used to working so hard, they are now working in conjunction with those more dominant muscles and voila you now have more muscles working, more precision and concentration needed to control said muscles and you will most likely feel that effort in spades! I love @carrie_pages_pilates take on this……”I always compare Pilates to dance and music. With dance and music after a certain point in your training, you're no longer learning new movements or notes but you refining your performance of them. You begin to put the movements or notes together in ways that make them more challenging. You may learn to execute more turns or hold notes longer but the fundamentals remain the same, therefore the process doesn’t get easier you just get better. For me, Pilates is like a dance or symphony that flows from one movement to the next and I love to experience how each workout feels different. I try to perform the movements with more precision and control concentrating on how I can move more effortlessly and focused. I never get bored. If anything I find myself falling more in love with Pilates year after year”. Well said Carrie, well said!
So there you have it, my firsts with Pilates. I know a lot of my clients have had some of these same thoughts/experiences… perhaps you have? Can you relate? Maybe there was a key ‘first’ for you that I’m missing? I’d love for you to share your experience with Pilates firsts. Maybe, you’re keen to get amongst some classes and start some firsts of your own? I’m currently taking on new clients, virtually for now, because of Rona, beauty of this is, it’s harder to hear you fart through Zoom, so what happens in your lounge room, stays in your lounge room! #winning
DM me on the Gram @kirsti_pilates_plus or shoot me an email kirsti@kirstipilatestoyou.com.au.