5 reasons to do Pilates in Winter

It’s getting cold. 

The sun is setting earlier.

The layers are coming out and on in full force.

We seek comforts foods, comfort drinks and comfort activities… hello couching! 

We can all start turning a little bit Cranky Bear in hibernation mode (anyone who has a small child/ren will know exactly who I am referring to in the Jingle Jangle Jungle).

So understandably we start to want to retreat to where it’s warm, dry, familiar and comfortable.

But change doesn’t happen from comfort.  

We could easily go about our business with our head in the sand, day in and day out. 

But if you want growth or expansion or difference in your life, then that doesn’t start with the change of seasons, that starts with you.

Fast forward 6 months. What will you be doing differently? How will you be moving? What will you be excited for? What will your days be filled with?

Will you be grinding, busy, ignoring pain points, tired and grumpy?

Or will you be stronger, energetic, mindful, with less pain and more joy? 

Maybe you’re thinking, holy shit, I just want to get through today, let alone think about what I’m going to be doing half a year from now?

Maybe you’re thinking, I don’t do winters, I. Just. Can’t. Even. Deal. (Especially in Melbourne town amiright?!)….so I’m not going on some mad fitness frenzy when I have zero motivation.

Well, Pilates is not a fitness frenzy, it’s not a quick fix, it’s the long game, it’s the foundational work that sets up a well oiled machine. Just like planting a beautiful lily bulb in winter to flower in summer, Pilates teaches you the basis upon which we can grow and evolve to accomplish more of what we are capable of, sometimes you just have to prove to yourself that it’s within you. 

For example…

Maybe you want to do your first triathlon next summer. You might think it’s too cold to be out in the ocean swimming, but you could be in that Pilates class working on your endurance, your core strength and practicing how you breath through exercises. 

Maybe you love the social tennis games you play with your girlfriends on balmy summer evenings, but you don’t love the debilitating knee pain that pops up for 3 days every time you play. Go get yourself into some Pilates class this winter, so you can work on strengthening and lengthening the muscles that support the knee 

Maybe you love long afternoons on the beach with the kids and family friends, but the thought of all the carrying of toys/towels/snacks, walking through sand, setting up tents, sends dread through your bones and back! Go and learn the Pilates techniques to alleviate tight shoulders and backs, go and build the Pilates strength in your muscles so lifting kids and kids toys and sand walking becomes a breeze, a sea breeze ;-). 

When the physical is hard and tiring and draining, we either end up resenting it or ignoring it and retreating. Either way, that builds the negative feelings and we are less likely to do them. And that can be a joy sucker!

But if triathlons, tennis and beach days aren't your thing, here are 5 other reasons you should get into Pilates this winter: 

1)Beat the Springtime-gym-junkies-challenges. You know the ones… ‘quick, don’t delay, summer is around the corner, get started on your bikini body now!’ Eye roll. I hate that stuff. But I used to do that stuff. When we go on drastic fitness frenzy’s and /or drastic diets, sure it might work to show us some noticeable results in the short term, but there’s a reason it never lasts long term. They are never about you and your body and your needs. No point in mimicking Jo Blow’s Keto-loving, Cross-Fitting goals when she is nothing like you. What works for one person, won’t be the answer for someone else. Start working on your goals, your body and your pain points now, not when the local gym is putting on a Spring special.

2) Get warm! Pilates in renowned for working from the inside out, literally your organs will get a ‘massage’ in a good Pilates class. With all that organ moving, blood pumping, muscle squeezing, you will feel warmer in no time. There is one particular exercise done near the beginning of every class called The 100’s, I promise you if you do this exercise the way it was intended, you will be striping off your jumpers and layers asap! Read more about it here.

3) Get happier :) You’ve heard it before, but exercise gives you a flood of endorphins to the brain ! It’s the feel good drug, it will literally change the chemicals in your brain. It will brighten your mood, change your outlook on what’s hard, you will have a stronger believe in yourself that you can do difficult things. Pilates is exactly this…do hard things in a Pilates class and you will see you can do hard things in life! 

4) Stay strong against flu season. Legend has it, that Joseph Pilates’ soldiers (who all did his exercises) in his internment camp during World War 1, were the only group to ALL avoid the dreaded Spanish Flu  (this flu killed about 50million people around the globe in 1918). It’s a situation that we can all relate to on some level with the global pandemic that has been happening since 2019.  Read more about it here.

5) Improve your breathing. One of the six Pilates principles is breath so it’s a big deal to us teachers! Yes breathing is autonomous- thank goodness. But that doesn’t mean we are all doing it in the best way possible. 

The breath is so powerful. It is a direct pathway to our para-sympathetic nervous system. The system that can makes us calm the F down. Now, I don’t know about you, but calming the F down is a great skill to work on when you have kids, a job, a husband/wife, a house, family, pets, an amygdala.

Couple a calmed nervous system with a boost of endorphins (see point 3 above) from moving your body around and hello kickstart to happiness. 

Breathing also heals. Big, full, proper, expansive breaths will send oxygenated blood all around the body. That blood will fill up and filter through all the little nooks and crannies around the body (technical Pilates term ‘nooks and crannies’) And blood heals. Fresh, oxygenated, clean blood aids in healing muscles tears, dysfunctional joints and maximising performance. And if you can learn to breath properly through exercise, you will learn to get the most out of the exercise, it will give you clarity, the ability to concentrate more, to relieve stress and manage pain.

As an extra breathing bonus, get out of the stale heater air to move some fresh stuff around your lungs. Whether you walk to your studio or take your virtual class to the back yard, (you will warm up pretty soon-see point 2 above!). No one regrets getting some fresh air, even in winter! 

My hope is that you won’t put off what is bothering you in your body now, or you won’t put off starting that goal until Spring or Summer. There is no better time like the present. It might be cold and wet out there but that shouldn’t dampen your spirits.

5 reasons why your back hurts DURING Pilates.

If you’ve ever had a sore back and have sought treatment for it, then no doubt you’ve heard something along the lines of:

“You need more core strength to reduce your ‘back pain’, you should go do Pilates”.

Yep every Physio and Osteo and Allied Health professional out there will likely say some version of this. 

And it’s true. 

Your spine is surrounded by what we call in Pilates, your Powerhouse, ie, the house or the area where all the power should be drawn from. You can think of it a bit like a cylinder around your trunk/middle, 360 degrees, front to back, side to side, top to bottom, each part or muscle plays a role in supporting the spine. When you can access and use each component equally and effectively (I have a whole other blog on the muscles that make up the powerhouse and how and what it means to use them equally and effectively), this then creates and improves stability, which allows you to generate power to build strength and improve mobility without pain or injury. 

If your powerhouse is not stable, then back pain can occur (among other things). 

Ok ok, you get it, you’ll go do the Pilates. BUT you’ve tried Pilates a few times and actually, in some things, your back pain is worse?! 

WTF is up with that? 

So you give up. 

Pilates has left a bad taste in your mouth and you just end up ‘putting up’ with back pain.

Does not sound like much fun really. 

This is a story I hear from time to time and it’s not ok. 

Here are some common things that might be going on:

1.You go to a group class.

When really you should be doing privates or semi-privates (at least initially anyway). You hear Pilates is great, your health professional tells you you need to do it, you know there’s a place down the road that Joe Blow goes to, so you think, ‘yep that’ll do, I’ll try that one too’. It’s got bright lights, loud music, seems fun with 20 reformers, but there’s no personal instruction, no modifications or amendments made for you and chances are instructor got their certificate over one weekend.

Yes it’s more expensive, yes it may have to mean you budget for it or have to figure out a way to afford it. Eg, maybe you only go out for dinner once a weekend instead of twice. But this is your health and wellbeing and longevity we’re talking about.  

If this is you, and you think Pilates is too expensive, then read this blog on Why Pilates Is Expensive.

2. You're doing too much.

You’re taking the optional progressions in group classes but you shouldn’t be (again, maybe you shouldn’t be in a group class in the first place). Remember Pilates is good for you, but only if you are working within your means and doing what YOU can do on that day and not trying to force yourself to do something you’re not ready for.

The grace we give ourselves when we are working out, is practice for the grace we give ourselves when we are doing life, business, family, friends, kids, husbands, wives and all the other things that can be hard but also rewarding.

3)  You’re doing too little. 

You expect that you can just go to your class, switch off from the world, mull over the problems you’re having at work and ponder what you’re going to cook for dinner while getting a workout done. So you go on autopilot mode, going through the motions and then wonder why you’re not making any progress or seeing any improvements. 

A central theme of Pilates is Concentration. You need to be focused in Pilates. You need to be present and in the moment. When you can focus your attention to the exercise at hand or what the teacher is trying to get you to do, you have a better chance at being successful in the movement. 

When we are concentrating and focusing our attention towards getting the right muscle engagement, then you learn to feel the muscles, you learn what it feels like when a muscle (or a group of muscles) is engaged.  Therefore your body awareness will increase and you can translate that into more mindful movement in every day life, like how you sit at your desk all day long. And how that does or does not contribute to the  back pain you’re experiencing and then you can draw on what you learnt in class when you were paying attention  to rectify it!

4) You’re not doing your homework.

Does your teacher advise you to get up from time to time from your desk and roll your shoulders out, or to bend or to twist? They’re not telling you that to fill up space in a conversation. They’re telling you that because your body needs it. Maybe they tell you to work on some rolling of the feet on a spikey ball because you get foot pain, which impacts the hip alignment and therefore your back.

What ever the extra curricula activity they are asking you to do between classes, try and do it. It will make your life easier and your time in class more rewarding as you will be able to move though more exercises that help build your strength and increase your mobility. 

.

5) It’s not actually your back that is the source of the real problem.

Ever heard of referred pain? Sometimes, we feel the pain somewhere (eg your back), but that pain is actually referred from somewhere else in the body. 

It’s because of our nervous system and the mixed messages of the wiring to and from the brain about the source of the pain. 

Sometimes back pain can actually be caused by the pancreas, kidneys or colon. If you’ve tried Pilates, Physio, Acupuncture and all the things, it could be time to go and see your GP. 

So there you have it. 5 common reasons why you might still be experiencing that annoying back pain even though you have started a Pilates class. 

Personally, I am a huge advocate for Pilates and back pain. It’s something I live with every day. Or I should say, I manage it everyday. I have a spinal condition called Spondylolisthesis,  which is a minor disc slippage in the lower vertebrae. Most likely caused from all those years of gymnastics as a child when my spine was developing. I’ve written a blog on it, you can read it here (PS I give away free Pilates exercises in this blog too!). Pilates is literally the magical glue that keeps me together, so I will forever continue to sing its praises. 

Own Your Pilates Game and Own Your Life!

Pilates is a practice of accountability. 

The definition of being accountable, is- 

‘required or expected to justify actions or decisions; responsible'.

Doesn’t it feel good when you decide to do something hard and then you do the hard thing and then you can bask in that feeling of accomplishing that hard thing?

Hard things for you may (or may not be):

• Climbing up a slide the wrong way to play tag with your child

• Pitching to a group of colleagues and clients about your latest game changing idea

• Saying no to that family member who constantly asks to much of you

• Swimming at the beach in your swimsuit for the first time in 20 years

• Training for and completing that half marathon

The list could go on and on…

What got you to the point where you could do that hard thing?

Practice, positive self talk, commitment, embracing and owning the fear and then moving past it, changing your mindset. 

Maybe you externalise the motivation? Doing it for your kids, doing it for the greater good of the family, doing it so I can fit into that dress next month. 

Maybe it’s an activity you want to be a habit? So you do it even when the motivation isn’t there. You push past the lethargy, and feelings of sluggishness because you know the habit will serve you well. 

It’s a bit like a Pilates practice. 

It can be scary at first. Trying new things. Going outside of your comfort zone. Pushing the boundaries. 

But, the more you show up for yourself, the more you will be winning at life. 

The more good habits in your life, the less chance there is for bad ones to take over.

That’s why I always hold my clients accountable. Accountable for showing up. Accountable for giving it go. Accountable to the practice. Because when you practice hard things and commit to them, you are essentially practicing life. 

• When your kid’s parent-teacher interview is cancelled, you reschedule.

• When a court case is adjourned you plan for when it recommences.

• When a lockdown in a pandemic steals your birthday plans, you reschedule them.

• When wet weather derails your outdoor wedding plans, you move the wedding inside, it’s called a ‘back up ‘plan aka plan B.

• When you can’t make your normal Pilates session you reschedule it so that your body doesn’t miss out/lose the benefits/gains you’ve made so far. It might not be your ideal time for that week, but it’s your plan B.

Something I hear a lot from my clients is ‘jeez whiz, you can really feel it when you miss a class’.

Yep you can.

Your body has worked hard to feel good, it needs that consistent input of instruction and movement to continue to develop new muscle memory and pathways. Once you start Pilates, and you start to feel and notice the benefits, so does your body. It knows what it’s  like to feel good. It will crave space and length and freedom in movement, it will appreciate being challenged in news ways, it will make you feel strong and connected. When you start missing classes, it feels a bit like taking one step forward and then two steps back. 

So how much do you want to achieve that goal? 

• To run faster.

• To have less back pain.

• To be able to keep up with the grandkids.
  
  

• To be able to lift heavier weights.

• To return to golf with out knee pain.

• To be in control of your body and not your body in control of you.

• To be able to sit at your work desk without neck pain.

Now it’s up to you not to miss your Pilates class, so you can reach your goal sooner. 

When you reach that goal, then you gotta work to sustain and maintain it.   Make it a habit so that on those sluggish days, you don’t have to rely on motivation, make it a habit that is so hard to break, that on those one off occasions you have to miss a session, you schedule in two classes the next week, to get yourself right where you left off. Showing up for your Pilates is showing up for yourself, it’s like your own little personal cheer squad cheering you on, rooting for you and high fiving you when you score!  

I know how it feels when I miss a session, not good, not good at all.  And I will do whatever I can for my clients to not experience that too. That’s a part of my job that I take seriously. 

So the next time you cancel your class and your Pilates teacher says sure thing, can we reschedule? Know that it is coming from a place of wanting to  see you win, win at achieving those goals, win at sustaining those goals and winning at life. Your teacher is in your corner, cheering you on, rooting for you, high fiving your achievements (maybe not outwardly- hello, social distancing- but definitely on the inside)  along the way!    

Why the principles of Pilates will make your life better.

I’ve just spent the first part of this year taking all my clients through the 6 principles of Pilates.

One principle a week for 6 weeks. 

Instead of using a body part or a prop as a point of focus for the class, it was a principle. 

And it was great (yep, I do say so myself!)

When I first started Pilates, the principles were an arbitrary thing for me. Principles, sminciples.

This is what I was concerned with- ‘I’ll go home and do 50 reps of this stomach series thing I learnt in class today’ or  ‘Who cares about how I breathe, as long as I’m working on my 6 pack’.

Oh no, 25 year old me was not vain or shallow at all, haha! 

The 6 principles are:

1) Breath

2) Precision 

3) Centering 

4) Control 

5) Concentration

6) Flow

Why do they matter?

Let me explain:

1) Breath- literally the reason we live and exist. But do you live and exist to your fullest? 

Yes breathing is autonomous- thank goodness. But that doesn’t mean we are all doing it in the best way possible. 

The breath is so powerful. It is a direct pathway to our para-sympathetic nervous system. The system that can make us calm the F down. Now, I don’t know about you, but calming the F down is a great skill to work on when you have kids, a job, a husband/wife, a house, family, pets, a conscience.

Couple a calmed nervous system with a boost of endorphins that you get from moving your body around, and hello happiness. That’s why exercise is addictive, it makes you happy from the inside out. It keeps you sane. And if you can learn to breath properly through exercise to get the most out of it, it will give you clarity, the ability to concentrate more, to relief stress and manage pain.

Breathing also heals. Big, full, proper, expansive breaths will send oxygenated blood all around the body. That blood will fill up and filter through all the little nooks and crannies around the body (technical Pilates term ‘nooks and crannies’) And blood heals. Fresh, oxygenated, clean blood aids in healing muscles tears, dysfunctional joints and maximising performance. 

2) Precision- Jospeh Pilates was a bit of a stickler for form. And rightfully so in most cases I think. Ultimately, good form and precision of movement/ body placement has the power to change bad habits! Bad habits with our form and posture that creep in over a lifetime and can end up causing so much alignment problems, that people live with all sorts of pain that they don’t even have to be living with. 

Precision is about learning to initiate movements from the right part of your body and with the appropriate effort.

For example, we don’t walk around on the balls of our feet all day long, it would cause some muscles in the feet and legs to over work and other muscles to under work. As you can imagine this would cause all sorts of muscles imbalances, and then under any load or endurance, this could make things very painful.

Pilates teaches you how to stand correctly on your feet, sit correctly, lie correctly, you will learn about foot placement and foot effort through every exercise, so that the precision you learn in the studio or class can translate into the form you use in the real world.

Once you have precision you have quality movement. That’s why in Pilates you don’t need to do 100 reps of anything. Quality over quantity every time! 

3) Centering- Your centre in Pilates is not just your 6 pack (although 25 year old me sure as hell thought  it was).

In Pilates, your Centre is also referred to as your Powerhouse. Your Powerhouse is all the muscles from your ribs to your hips in the front, in the back and around the sides- think of them like a girdle of muscles that we want to strengthen to help stabilise your spine and pelvis. Then, we definitely can not forget about the booty muscles- they are part of the Powerhouse too. Lesley Logan has famously called this region your Tharse, where your thighs meet your arse! 

In Pilates, the premise is that we work from the centre first, this is where we draw our strength and stability from, then we work our extremities (arms and legs) from a strong and table place.

I love how all the muscles are invited to a Pilates Party! The host of this Pilates party is the Powerhouse, but they are very friendly hosts and invite the whole neighbourhood (body) along, but not before the hosts have a strong and stable environment to invite all those guests in. Nothing worse than inviting people into a house and the the ground falls out from under you! Those guests would not come back! 

4) Control- Before Pilates was called Pilates, it was called Contrology. It was’t until after Joseph Pilates died in 1967 that it was named after his namesake. 

I think once you know this, it’s clear to see just how much importance Joseph put on being able to have control over the body. 

And I think it becomes clearer as we get older, if you live a sedentary life and overall poor health choices, your body starts to be in control of you. Whether that be, illnesses, ailments, injuries, these things start to dictate our life and the choices we make. No longer do we choose to partake in life as much, because sadly, it hurts. 

So when I think of control, I think of putting yourself back in control of your body. You are in the driver’s seat. Wouldn’t it be nice to make decisions based on what brings you joy and happiness and not because you are worried your back will play up or your knee will hurt?

One of Joseph Pilates’ students said ‘Pilates is stretch and strength with control- control is what is most important because it uses your mind’. When you can exercise control over your mind, you can execute exact movement in the body. And it’s that exact movement (hello precision- see principle 2 above) that will change bad habits, poor alignment, build strength and increase mobility.

5) Concentration- There is a fun little imagery exercise that I like to do with my clients when we focus on this principle. It’s called the Lemon Imagery Exercise. I highly recommend you get someone to read it to you while you take a comfy seat or lie down on the floor. It’s a little different but it highlights just how powerful the mind is on the physical body. 

Look, if you have ever done Pilates and you are thinking of how much washing you have to do when you get home or what you’re going to cook for dinner later that day, then you’ll know that basically, you’ve got no chance at it. You need to be focused. You need to be present and in the moment. When you can focus your attention to the exercise at hand or what the teacher is trying to get you to do, you have a better chance at being successful in the movement. 

The benefits of being mindful and participating in mindful movement are huge, not only can we reduce stress (see principle 1 above), but we can also reduce blood pressure and manage pain better. 

When we are concentrating and focusing our attention towards getting the right muscle engagement, then you learn to feel the muscles, you learn what it feels like when a muscle (or a group of muscles) is engaged.  Therefore, your body awareness will increase and you can translate that into more mindful movement in every day life, like how you sit at your desk all day long. You’ll start to be more efficient with your posture and how you hold yourself in everyday tasks, from driving and washing dishes, to cycling and running.

6) Flow- In 1925 Joseph Pilates moved from England to New York. He set up his first American studio under the New York Ballet school, you could say that some of his exercises were executed with the influence of helping an injured ballet dancer recover to full strength, poise and grace. And what a beautiful thing. If you’re a ballet dancer. But most of us are not ballet dancers. So being able to flow like a ballet dancer and being able to flow like a regular human being are two different things. 

To me, getting my clients to move with ease in the class means they have a better chance of being able to move with ease in the real world. How we move into and out of exercises (the transitions) becomes a focus point when we are trying to find more ease and flow in movement.

When you ride a busy tram (or a bus or some other public transport), it’s not just how you stand up in the vehicle eg, standing up with your powerhouse switched on (see principle 3 above) in preparation to withstand any bumpy rides. It’s how you get up off the seat at the tram/bus/train stop- do you need to hold onto something? It’s how you get up the giant steps of the tram/bus/train- do you trip up them or over your own feet? It’s how you hold your backpack or satchel over your shoulder- do you off load the one sided weight through hip hiking? All these other ‘transitional’ movements get you onto the tram, but are they the movements causing you more trouble than the movement of riding the tram itself?! 

I hope I have helped to highlight just how important Pilates Principles are, not just for a good Pilates class, but for everyday life! 

Come and experience how I turn these principles into exercises, reach out to me here to enquire about how we can get Pilates in your life!

There's a First Time for Everything, Including Pilates.

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 perfect AngelinaJolie OhFuck FacePalm Animated GIF for your conversation. Discover and Share the best GIFs on Tenor.

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.