Practice What You Teach: Pilates fuzzy strap revelations…

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Today’s fuzzy strap revelations were inspired by Andrea Maida and her insightful blog called:  The Pilates Exercises and the Lower Body: Strength for Life!

Andrea is one of my favorite Pilates bloggies as I love how she talks about the connections in the Pilates method and shares her own personal revelations along the way (and she’s pretty funny)!  After reading Andrea’s blog about the lower body I often find myself rethinking the lower half of my body, it’s purpose in the Pilates exercises and how what happens in the lower half of the body effects the body as a whole during each exercise.

IMG_5794During a reformer workout this week I had quite a few aha moments when exploring this concept but my favorite was on the short box.  I tell people all the time to be strong in their straps and use
their legs to anchor, but I found I wasn’t doing it myself( or least not doing it enough!)  When I do Flat Back on the Short box I often keep my range fairly small as I feel like if I go to far I immediately start to feel it in my low back.  So today I dug a little deeper and engaged like I had not quite engaged before.

I anchored into the fuzzy short box strap and found my lower body.  I engaged through my legs to pull the strap apart and reach into and found a place of length where I almost felt like my sitting bones were going to lift off the box (and it was an amazing amount of work).  The beautiful thing was that I felt amazingly stronger throughout my whole body and was able to hinge back to a much bigger range of motion without any strain or pain through my low back. The exercise was at least 20 times more challenging but I also moved about 200 percent better!!  This is what I love about the Pilates work!!

The next day I also reconfirmed my new found revelations as I was feeling worked muscles in places that I hadn’t felt for awhile or ever! I love it when that happens and yet another reason I love the Pilates work.

If you’re working with me this week don’t be surprised if I encourage you to find your lower body in new ways.  The only thing better than finding new engagement and understanding in my own body is sharing it with others!!

Practice What you Teach: Something is always better than nothing…..

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I was chatting with my Mom the other night and catching up on her day, which quite frankly was a crazy, busy stressful day that would have exhausted anybody!  She mentioned how she loved my blog announcing I was going to be blogging about my daily Pilates practice all year long(she’s always my biggest supporter so this was no surprise!!). She mentioned it was her goal to start doing her Pilates everyday too and how it just didn’t happen today.  She was going to watch and workout with a DVD in the morning but started working on other things that needed to get done and the day got away from her (we can all relate to that!).   This conversation is exactly why I’ll be sharing my personal Pilates practice all year long….

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Today’s blog inspired by Mom!

I want to change the way my Mom and you think about movement!  Sure it’s great to go to the studio and take a class or put a 30 minute DVD on and workout, but it’s not always realistic!  On those days, instead of beating yourself up because you didn’t do anything I want you to start thinking of how you can incorporate your Pilates movement throughout your day.  Can you do 10 squats standing in your kitchen after you loaded the dishwasher?  Could you lay on the floor and take 2 minutes and do your Hundreds exercise?  How about just doing some stretches while you are watching the news?

Could you take 7 minutes to do a mini Pilates workout? ( you probably don’t even need to change clothes…)  The video below is me teaching my favorite mini Pilates Mat workout.  It’s really just the first sequence of a classical Pilates Mat routine.  I make a daily deal with myself to always do something even if it’s just the Hundreds( and yes some days it’s just the Hundreds!!).   Many days though I continue on and do the workout below or some version of the Pilates Mat sequence.  Once I get started it feels good and I enjoy it.

[tweetthis]Adding Pilates to your life is easier than you think! #beinspired #practicewhatyouteach [/tweetthis]

If you are creating a Pilates practice at home you might find our little YouTube videos are much more convenient than a DVD.  You can easily put the YouTube app on your phone or tablet and bring up the Rivercity Pilates Channel so you can watch them anywhere, anytime.

I don’t know about you but just the thought of finding the DVD, getting the TV set up to watch it, and finding the time to watch it when I won’t be distracted is enough to make me not watch it or put it off to another day.  On the other hand I don’t mind starting to watch a YouTube video on my phone when I have a few minutes as it’s portable and I can sneak into a clear room and follow along and if I don’t get through the whole thing I know I can continue with it another time.

I’m super excited to share my Pilates practice journey this year and even more excited to hear from you and how you are incorporating your Pilates practice in your life!  Be sure to comment below or on social media and share your story!

 

 

Can you touch your toe to your forehead?

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First of all let me start this blog by saying never will you come to a Pilates session and get asked to touch your toe to your forehead!  It’s not something we ever do or even try to do.  That being said I have a story about how trying to touch my toe to my forehead gave me some new goals for my 2016 Pilates practice!

During a semi-private session one of my clients said to the other something like, “I can’t believe you can’t touch your toe to your forehead!”  She then grabbed her foot and put her big Toe on her forehead.  We all laughed and I mentioned how impressed I was!  She said,  “You can do this right?”.   Hmmmmm….I didn’t think sooo and surely wasn’t going to try it right then.   But of course after I got home that evening I had to try it.

I was sitting reading with my kids and asked them if they could do it.  They easily grabbed their foot and put it on their forehead( not surprising really).  I grabbed my foot and tried really hard to getIMG_5784 it to my forehead…….it did not go easily but I was close.  So I curled my spine toward my foot a little bit more and I could get it there( although for merely a second!) My abdominal muscles were working so hard to curl my spine forward that they started getting a cramping like sensation!! Maybe I needed to try the other foot.  I should have know that I naturally grabbed my less tight leg/hip to try it the first time and there was no way my right foot was getting to my forehead.

I’m a little bit competitive (especially with myself) and really don’t like to not be able to do things. So immediately my brain went to, ” Why is this so hard for me and why is it soo much harder for me on my right side?”.  A quick scan of my body and I knew that it was hard because of tightness in my legs and hips and imbalances between the two sides.  I know my right side is my tighter side and when I am thinking of it or focusing on it I do try to find ways to balance it out (but maybe I need to do that more often?).

Soo what’s a Pilates instructor to do?  I have a new goal for 2016….. lengthen, stretch and balance so that maybe I can touch my right toe to my forehead.  Helping others create balance in their bodies through movement is what I do on a daily basis, so how fun and fitting that one of my own goals is to balance out my body!!  I snapped a picture of my toe touching forehead attempts, again not because I want to impress you or want you to try this, but because I want to use this as a small marker of how I’m doing at creating balance in my body as the year progresses.

Practice what you teach: Breath and concentration can do wonders..

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Breath and concentration (two of our Pilates principles) can do amazing things!  I woke up on New Years day with a pesky pain in the muscles between my shoulder blade and spine.  It was nothing horrible, just a “I must have slept wrong” kind of pain.

My usual routine in the morning is to start my day with my Pilates Mat work and even though I was feeling a little tight and twingey by my shoulder blade, I wanted to start the year off right and get my day started with some movement.  I grabbed my foam roller as that spot in my upper back really just felt like it needed a good massage.  I spent a few moments just lying on the foam roller in different positions and massaging near the spot- which helped although it was still there.

I decided to go through my mat routine and make my focus breath and specifically breathing into the area that was bothering me.  Throughout my routine whenever I felt that spot I took a deeper breath and really envisioned my breath expanding into that area.  Even though I tell people all the time to try techniques like this I am always re-amazed when I use them on myself and they work!  I love to be reminded of how amazing our thoughts, our bodies and our ability to create change in our body is!!

#PracticeWhatYouTeach (1)Needless to say I felt soo much better after getting my Pilates Mat work in.  The spot by my shoulder blade had not completely disappeared but it was so much better AND what happened the rest of the day was even better.  When I found myself feeling that tightness I went back to my practice of breathing into that space and it was better.  By the time the Hawkeyes were headed onto the field for the Rose Bowl I wasn’t feeling the pain at all!

[tweetthis]Movement is healing! #breath #concentrate #Pilates #practicewhatyouteach[/tweetthis]

What does a Pilates practice really look like?

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2016Happy New Year!! I don’t know about you but there is something about a new year that I love! I love to take a little time and just see where I am in life, be grateful for what I have and set some goals and focus for the year ahead.  This year as I was taking a little time to think about what I wanted 2016 to look like I decided that I wanted to continue to do more of what I love in life.  Like most people I have a tendency to get caught up in my to do lists, the day to day stuff that needs to be done and the little things that quite frankly don’t matter so much.

On the top of my lists of what I love to do are Pilates (and movement in general) and writing.  So I decided to commit myself to writing a weekly blog about my own daily Pilates practice.  Here’s a few reasons why I’ve decided to share this journey with you:

  1. Personal growth.  I’m not going to lie, this is a pretty selfish endeavor!  Committing myself to writing about my daily Pilates practice over an entire year is going to commit me do digging deep and exploring what I am practicing, why I am doing what I’m doing and will without a doubt make myself a better instructor in my professional life and a better person overall! Pilates is an integral part of my health and my career but I’ve never taken the time to look so closely at my own practice and share it with others!
  2. Realism.  (is that a word??)  I want to share what a Pilates practice looks like with the world.  Every time I turn around there is a barely dressed, super-model-looking-woman doing super advanced Pilates exercises on Instagram, Facebook and  everywhere online.  I want people to know those pictures are not what having a Pilates practice is about. I’m super passionate about the Pilates method of exercise being able to change lives for the better and I want people to have a realistic view of what it’s like to incorporate the method in their life! I’m pretty lucky to be able to teach Pilates as a career but just like everyone else I still have to find time to fit in my own Pilates practice throughout my days.  There are days when I get a full mat or equipment workout in and there are days when I sneak in various exercises in between clients, and taking kids to activities and folding laundry!  A Pilates practice doesn’t have to be perfect to be effective!!
  3. Inspiration.  We all need to be inspired some days and I’m hoping that sharing my Pilates journey over the year might encourage someone to start their own practice, have the courage to walk into a Pilates studio and try something new or maybe just restart something they used to do.  I’m hoping it will encourage everyone to not be so hard on themselves when they don’t do something perfect in their own movement practice and realize the amazing benefits to creating a Pilates practice in their life wherever they are!

#PracticeWhatYouTeach (1)Be sure to check in with me each week as I give you some highlights of what my Pilates practice looked like, how my body was feeling, and how it affected the rest of my life!  I’ll be using the hashtag #pilates #practicewhatyouteach throughout the year!