My baby is now 9 months old and appears to have inherited the movement genes from me, early to crawl and now already raring to walk. She often ends up in part of my Pilates classes and by the looks of her in this photo she has been taking notes! Who needs toys when you can chase a roller then roll over it. And who says you can’t exercise with your baby too?!
So next week in post natal pilates maybe we should get the babies doing a workout too.
Skimming through a fitness magazine this morning whilst feeding the baby and this phrase leapt out at me.
“In fitness, one size does not fit all”
I LOVE IT.
To me that is completely how I like to teach. I always have a rough lesson plan but am ready to adapt the session dependant on who attends, how the class are feeling, how I am feeling and how many are there. I also adapt each exercise to a certain level dependant on the class and may have different people doing the same exercise at different levels. That way everyone gets the workout they want. Individuality is the key in my mind. We all have different bodies and different personalities so surely we all need different ways of exercising too. With Pilates you get that. Everyone works at their own level, some may add in an extra lever (arm/leg), some may have their head, neck and shoulders raised off the mat, some may use a ball as an aid. Others may take a break and have a snooze (its allowed, the break that is, maybe not the snooze!). In the case of post natal Pilates we also work at the need and request of the babies!! Mums dip in and out to feed or cuddle babes as needed. In my case yesterday with Little Miss Grump I had to feed and cuddle whilst teaching the class. Thank goodness I’m a woman so can multi-task 🙂
So however you feel today and whatever type of body shape, size and personality you are, get active in some way. Dance around the kitchen, go for a walk, go kite surfing, do some gardening…..or come to Pilates 😉
So Pippa Middleton has brought Pilates into the limelight as she says it is the key to her amazing figure. Now her Pilates instructor has got a publishing deal to write a Pilates book, which I’m sure will be a big hit and I hope it will inspire more people to try out Pilates classes.
This has led me to wonder whether Pilates can be taught through a book or if it’s more of a class based thing? Personally when I was a Pilates beginner I found it so hard to retrain my brain, to understand all the terminology, to get the breathing right and to focus on my alignment. I needed quite a lot of constant reminders and hand on correction until I grasped the basics. However different people learn in different ways and now I understand Pilates I find books really useful. And I love books!
What do you think?
I shall be launching 2 new classes in September to keep up with the demand! Exciting stuff.
The new classes will be:
Thursday evening 8-8.45pm
Saturday 9.30-10.15am
Both classes will be mixed ability so suitable for beginners but with added elements for those who have done Pilates before.
Let me know if you would like a space, Thursday evening is already pretty full and looking like a fun group, some beginners and some old faces from my post natal class who are back at work.
Pilates is a great way to exercise and relax at the end of a busy week so come and join us 🙂
Contentious statement huh. It’s certainly an interesting thought.
The clever people at http://www.medicalbillingandcoding.org/sitting-kills/ tell us that people are now sitting for an astonishing average of 9.3 hours a day! I find that fact amazing, I’m not sure I could sit for that long in one day, but then I’ve never been a fan of sitting still for long, ask my husband. He’s always telling me to “just come and sit down”.
So whats the problem with sitting….observational studies suggest that it is linked to obesity and heart disease. This is pretty obvious as being inactive is a known factor in these chronic diseases. The interesting idea from studies is that sitting still is the problem as it slows your metabolism down, so even those who exercise regularly but then sit still for long periods will have a slower metabolism and consequently gain weight. So sitting needs to be interrupted with periods of activity.
Part of the problem from a Pilates perspective is that sitting places your body in a position thats just not good for your alignment. The more time you spend sitting, the tighter your hamstrings become. The tighter your hamstrings, the more they pull the lowest curve out of the spine and tuck the tailbone under. You get lower back pain…..sound familiar?! If so come and see me and we’ll find some exercises to help 🙂
The other issue is all the curves and bends in the body affect your blood flow. Your blood likes to flow freely in a straight line. Sitting in a bent position for a long period of time stops it from being able to do this. And…..you say…..well this leads to blood cells bumping into things and getting damaged, which leads to plaques building up obstructing blood vessels which links us back to heart disease. Ouch.
The answer…either have a standing workstation (lovely idea and great if it works for you but it isn’t going to work for most people) or break up your sitting with lots of activity breaks – make a drink, walk up some stairs, go and chat to someone instead of emailing them…you get the idea. Standing instantly makes your body work harder and puts you in a better alignment, especially if you’ve been to my Pilates sessions and have learnt how to stand 🙂
Fascinating stuff. It certainly means those hours of baby rocking and sling walking combined with my inability to sit still is all good. So all of you sat down reading this…STAND UP!
Osteoporosis International Journal has written a guide for health professional working in rehabilitation for patients with Osteoporosis. The techniques described are basically Pilates showing how spot on the Pilates technique really is.
There’s a summary of the journal advice here…http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/health/28backsb.html?_r=2&ref=todayspaper
It talks about avoiding stomach crunches/sit ups done in the way typically seen in gyms and other fitness classes, lots of repetitions, done at full speed where the back is jerked up off the floor putting pressure on the lower spine. The internal organs are pushed aside and the stomach compacted. Doing lots of repetitions means good technique is lost and the head is often pulled up by the arms. It is of course possible to do a good sit up but its not often seen in a gym/large class environment, in fact as an ex gym-bunny myself I can truly say I used to do sit ups all wrong! In Pilates a curl up would be done in a much slower, controlled way, lengthening the spine, peeling up off the mat bone by bone and replacing the same way. Only a few reps would be done as we look for quality and not quantity.
Other tips talk about maintaining good core strength when picking up objects and moving the body and maintaining a good posture. Again Pilates will help with this. I know that I am now so aware of my posture and the way I move that I tend to auto correct myself at points in the day. So if I bend to pick up the baby moving from my waist I tell myself off and practise doing it moving from the hips instead. Over time it becomes a habit. My shoulders used to be hunched up by my ears and after a while of working on that I now keep them pulled down properly (most of the time!).
So…not only is Pilates good for toning and building that all important core strength but the Pilates lifestyle is recommended for bone health. Fab news.
This week I’ve had a teething baby which has meant little sleep and lots of energy exerted in looking after a grizzly one. You’d think with all of that teaching Pilates would seem like a chore. But not at all. Its totally revived and refreshed me.
And its not just me, I quote a lady from my post-natal class:
It seems that Pilates also cures headaches – feeling so much better now. Thank you Priya .
So if you’re feeling in need of a little pick me up Pilates could be the perfect tonic for you!
After another night of little sleep I’m looking forward to a Pilates and stretching session all of my own later on.
I’ve finally treated myself and bought some Pilates rollers. Funny way to treat myself I know, but I do love rollers. For those of you now in the know this is a roller… you lie on them on your backs and they make you more unstable so its harder work doing your basic exercises.
This week I’ve introduced them gently to most of my classes. Monday evening (the rowdy lot) I went in to find one person stood on their roller, one person with one above their head and lots of giggles. I’m not 100% sure how the rollers went down with these guys, there were a few mumbles that they were too firm to lie on, and they certainly made people concentrate hard and work hard as there was little of the usual chatter going on. Hopefully over time we shall get used to them in class. So far we’ve just done very gentle exercises on them, but will hopefully work up to removing both legs from the mat and doing some One leg Stretches etc…
As I had a smaller class for post natal Pilates we also used the rollers. I wasn’t sure how this would go down but the mummies loved them. Mainly because of the way you can hug the roller with your shoulder blades and get a really, really good upper back stretch. Gets rid of the breastfeeding/carrying baby tension. I think these will be coming out regularly with this class.
After all the fuss my husband was keen to join in so last night he had a bit of roller action too. He actually quite liked just lying on them. Bit of a funny scene as the two of us just lay stretched out on the rollers for a while, till baby Tew needed some cuddles, then she came in too and watched mummy demo some moves. I am the family entertainment.
It’s fair to say that I know most of my Monday night class quite well because they have been coming to my classes for some time. So that means I’m always on the lookout for new class ideas to stretch and enthuse them and am also able to try new things out with them, be a bit more experimental. This week at a request from a class participant we did a time test. I designed a class where the majority of the exercises could be measured in some way, so we looked things like the number of press ups that could be done and how long the plank could safely be held for. We worked though all the main muscle groups in the body rather than concentrating on the core alone including resistance bands to work the arms and deltoids. I’m hoping that when we repeat this in a few weeks we’ll see improvements.
The initial feedback from the class was how hard it was to time exercises and have an aim to hold things for a 60 seconds, it seemed to make people work harder. However I was also aware that people may push themselves a bit too hard and compromise on the quality of the move. In Pilates we like quality rather than quantity. At the very least this made a fun, different way to teach a class but hopefully it challenged the class and will encourage them in a few weeks when we redo some of the exercises and see improvements.
Yesterday was the 3rd week of my Thursday classes and it’s lovely to see people becoming more and more used to Pilates.
I have 2 ladies coming who have both had double hip replacements. Their aims include building strength, mobility and flexibility. Usually 1 of these ladies is unable to roll down through her spine, bend her knees and come down to the mat. Instead she uses the windowsill to lever herself down. So it was exciting to see her manage to come down to the mat for the first time! I’m looking forward to seeing some significant improvements in these 2 ladies.
I saw similar progress in the afternoon class with a lady who had been unable to get up from the mat from a kneeling position, now able to do so. This particular lady was also looking stronger in her core and less wobbly.
Other feedback I have had from these classes is how relaxed Pilates makes people feel, that they are becoming a bit more body aware and how it is making them think about their posture at other points of the week. All this in just 3 weeks! I can’t wait to see what 3 months does 🙂
