Gaby
Hooray! Friends, hooray! I’ve just added Pilates to my fitness routine! Today, I completed my training at the Fitness Academy. Now I proudly call myself an instructor of Pilates! I can’t wait for the workweek to start so I can begin practicing! I absolutely loved the course. It brought back memories of my school years: we were pushed to our limits (four hours of practice, including two hours of masterclasses with leading experts and two hours of training with each other, lectures, homework….). In short, I now know firsthand what overtraining feels like and how one can lose weight in just three days. But I also discovered something new and exciting—it’s like drinking and never being quenched, listening and wanting to hear more and more. It’s crucial to learn what you choose for YOURSELF, what truly interests you.
For those who don’t know, let me share a bit about what Pilates is. In the late 19th century, its creator, Joseph Pilates, was born. Like many great trainers, he was born weak and sickly, suffering from rickets and asthma. He worked tirelessly on himself, and during World War I, he developed a series of exercises that helped rehabilitate bedridden patients in a military hospital in England, where he worked as a nurse (hence the well-known name of the apparatus used for bodywork—the “Reformer,” which originally consisted of ropes attached to patients’ beds). He also managed to survive in a concentration camp, where he taught exercises to others and practiced himself.
In 1926, Joseph opened his first Pilates studio. His clients included dancers and athletes recovering from injuries, and later, as the Pilates method evolved and no longer required special equipment, many celebrities and actors (like Madonna, Sharon Stone, Julia Roberts…) joined the ranks of his clientele. There are countless types of Pilates—it truly is a treasure trove of self-improvement. From the very first class, I fell in love with this technique, and for good reason. Its goal is the harmonious collaboration of body and mind (it even falls under the fitness category of “Body and Mind”). There’s a unique philosophy, principles, and focal points.
Pilates is a system of exercises aimed at strengthening and lengthening muscles, improving posture, and developing a sense of balance, equilibrium, and coordination through the use of one’s own body and mind. It’s an incredibly harmonious technique, with beautiful fluidity that our tired and “beaten by life” bodies immediately recognize as something natural. You enter a blissful state from which you then have to force yourself out at the end of the session. It’s VERY interesting! Each exercise has a vast number of modifications and levels of difficulty, making it feel like a lifetime wouldn’t be enough to try them all. The beginner level itself showed me that I was only at the START of my development. Despite all my strong muscles (as I confidently believed!), I had no idea what a strong core truly was, what abdominal muscles felt like, and I couldn’t even perform many exercises correctly—simply lacking the strength! So, there’s a long road ahead of work on myself first and foremost…. Pilates is definitely worth trying. It’s close to yoga, akin to bodyflex, Qigong, and Callanetics… but it’s its own SPECIAL system, very independent and wise, interesting and endless.
