Pilates can help you avoid back and neck pain from long hours at your computer! Write yourself a yellow sticky note — (or a reminder in Outlook) to “Check your Pilates Posture” every 60 minutes. Try it for 2 weeks — and see if you develop a better sitting posture while you’re working!
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As I was thinking about my blog this week I was reflecting on Thanksgiving and how I especially love all the reminders this time of year to practice gratitude. Taking some time throughout my day to reflect on all the many things and people I have to be grateful for always brightens my day! So I started thinking about my Pilates practice…what it has taught me and why I’m so grateful for it. So many things popped into my head like:
But I really wanted to figure out what my top thing would be that I was grateful for. I was thinking about the fact that I have been practicing Pilates for 17 plus years. That’s a long time to do anything. And I think what I’m most grateful for is how it has taught me to look at movement, and exercise and “fitness”. When I started Pilates I was a twenty something looking for the next best thing to get fit, strong and skinny. I didn’t have the slightest idea how this Pilates thing that I would find would truly change how I live my life.
Today I’m grateful that I know how effective my thought process is in changing how my body moves and feels. I’m grateful that I understand how to incorporate movement into my life and not have to be worried about it. I’m grateful that movement is something I do not because I want to be a certain size or look a certain way, but because I enjoy it and I love how it makes me feel. I’m grateful that movement is part of my life and not just a workout.
I read an article from Runner’s World the other day ago and the author, Marc Parent said this about a friend of his who had incorporated running into his daily routine that I absolutely loved:
“Rather than wear fitness like a fancy jacket on running days like I do, he has absorbed fitness into the fabric of his life. I’ve asked him how he does it, how he runs every day, and he always shrugs like it’s no big deal. He says a morning run is on par with brushing his teeth and he wouldn’t think of skipping that either.”
I like to think my biggest Pilates gift is absorbing movement into the fabric of my life and being able to help others to do the same!!! #Grateful #Thankful #Gratitude #ThanksJoe
Do you ever get bored with your workouts? If you asked me this I would probably say no. There is so much variety built in to the Pilates movements and system it would be hard to get bored. I realized this week though that I do “work” at not being bored and I kind of do it without even realizing it. When I decide to do a Pilates Mat Workout or Pilates Reformer workout (that I could do in my sleep because my body knows it pretty well…) I automatically find something I want to work on that day and I incorporate it into everything I do. Some days I just focus on coordinating breath or breathing better. Other days I am focused on whole body engagement, balance in my body or flow. Other days I focus on a body part like feet or shoulders and what they should be doing. Some days I pick something that I’ve been specifically having a client work on because I want to know what it feels like to do what I’m asking of them.
This week I did a mat workout where I focused on stability and lengthening in my low spine. Every exercise I did I mentally came back to finding how I could better decompress and lengthen the space between my hips and rib cage. The result was a great focused workout and some good soreness in my abdominal muscles! I also found myself checking in with that low spine length throughout the rest of my week (like when I was sitting at the computer working and even when I was standing teaching.) All of this got me thinking and I thought I’d put together a quick list of some different focus ideas for myself and anyone else who might need a quick idea. These ideas work best when you are not necessarily learning something brand new but practicing those movements and sequences that your body already knows fairly well.
This is just a quick list of things I thought of or have used in my own workouts. I would love to hear more ideas from you!
I was working with a client this morning, and she was struggling with not “scrunching” her shoulders. As we worked through her session, she talked about years of working at a desk using a computer sometimes with good posture, sometimes with questionable poster, carrying heavy computers to and from work on a commute in a bag slung over her shoulder, or a backpack carried with only one strap. Do any of these behaviors ring true to you?
This is a quick video using a theraband to help you find your Pilates shoulders. You can do this video at work (it only takes a couple of minutes, and it will help you improve your posture), and you’ll feel the benefits in your neck, shoulders and back! If you need a theraband, we have them for only $5 at the studio!
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I got to do something I love this week – Pilates with my son! As a Pilates teacher my kids get a lot of exposure to movement and of course I’m always playing and moving with them. As a mom of 3 and business owner I can tell you that getting one on one alone time with the kids is definitely rare and treasured and rarely does it happen at the studio! This week the stars aligned and my son Tyler was able to come hang out at the studio with me for part of the day. It was probably the first time that I worked with him in a more structured way than our usual play time at home or Pilates Mat class at school and it was super fun!
As a parent I get to watch Tyler move when he’s taking a Ninja Zone class, a Taekwondo class and even when I teach a Pilates Mat class at his school, but this was definitely different. I loved being able to put him on the reformer and watch him put the pieces together to figure out how to do Footwork on the Reformer. I loved seeing that although I only cued him a couple of times to engage his abdominal muscles, he automatically engaged them on most exercises. I loved seeing how even though it was a challenge, he worked to control equipment (ie no banging or making noise…which is asking a lot from a 10 year old boy!) and it didn’t take his body long to figure it out! When I showed him how to do an exercise I call scooter on the Reformer he jumped on and said we could both do this at the same time (and he was right!). After that exercise Tyler decided we should make a Parent/Kid Pilates class that he would help me design!
As he tried exercises it was fascinating to listen to him talk about how the exercises felt (be sure to watch the video of him describing jumping on the reformer!) He of course wanted to play on the Cadillac (who doesn’t?…it’s like a giant jungle gym!) so I let him play on his own and found that he ended up doing movements with the Trapeze that were really close to traditional exercises without any cuing from me!
From a personal practice standpoint, working with Tyler reminded me of the joy of movement and exploring movement. As I worked with him I tried not to over teach him, but just give him some basic instructions designed to keep him safe and let him figure things out on his own. It was very cool to see how the feedback from the equipment helped him very quickly move better and more efficiently. What a great reminder of the value in trying new things and trusting the design of the equipment and the exercises!
Can you sit on the floor and stand back up without touching your hand or knee on the floor? Last week when I took Benjamin Degenhardt’s Upright Pilates workshop he started by talking about this ability. There has been some interesting studies done on life expectancy in older adults being directly correlated to this ability. The first thing that popped into my head when this discussion started was….Can I do it? When I got to try it during workshop time I was a little embarrassed at how hard it was for me (I am a Pilates teacher after all….). ..and I have to tell you I had to use a hand on the floor. This bothered me and I made a pact with myself to practice and master this!
Have I mastered it yet? Nope. Have I been practicing…you bet. Almost every time I practice Pilates I take a little time to try out my ability to get down and stand back up. Somewhere in that practice I learned a lot about my teaching and about what I can do to help others move better in their life. Here’s a quick video of my 8 year old daughter and I practicing!
I had been practicing the crossed leg sit and stand which is often shown as the example of getting down and back up. I found myself getting creative and exploring what was so hard about the movement and what I needed to do to be successful at it. I discovered if I added a little rolling like a ball in once I sat down I could use my momentum to help get me back up. I learned that the position of my feet and ankles made a big difference in my success of standing back up. And then at some point as I practiced I had an aha moment. It went a little something like this in my head:
Most of my clients are probably not going to be able to do this. Is there any benefit to training them to get up and down exactly like this? Does it really matter if one hand or a knee touches the floor? Probably not. Is there benefit in helping them strengthen and balance their bodies in a way that allows them to safely get down and up from the floor? Yes of course!! Do we do this type of work in our sessions?…ALL THE TIME!! What can I do as a teacher that would benefit my clients the most when it comes to getting up and down?
My conclusion: Talk about the benefits of Pilates more! The Pilates exercises are so well designed to help us live life and do little things like get up and get down to the floor. Sometimes I need to be reminded as a teacher that my job is not just to teach the correct way to do an exercise or movement but to motivate, inspire and educate clients on why this work will help them live life better. I don’t know about you, but I’m much more motivated to do the detailed work of an exercise when I know why I’m doing it and what it will help me do in the rest of my life.
As a quick example, we often have specific foot and ankle positions that we use in Pilates exercises. Sometimes I feel like these adjustments seem small or insignificant in the big picture of the exercise to clients. I have found though that when I talk about how important it is to have flexible, strong feet when you want to get up off the floor or at that moment you need to catch your balance….clients seem to connect to that more, something clicks and they make the effort to work on that detail of the exercise.
Don’t be surprised if you hear me teaching a little bit more about not just how to do an exercise but why we do it! I would love to know from you: is this type of teaching helpful for you as a student? Are there any particular exercises or pieces of the Pilates exercises that standout for you because of what they help you do in your day to day life?