I Heart Pilates

One of the more embarrassing (and terribly blonde) moments of my life occurred one evening a few years ago while leading a class of teenagers that were preparing to be confirmed at Church. It was Easter season, and that night's particular lesson happened to involve The Passion. Picture: a room full of forty 16-18 year olds in a dimly lit room, intently listening to me reading the passion accounts from The Bible. I get to a line that mentions Pontius Pilate - a name I'm familiar with, in fact, one that I say on a daily basis in prayer. (Especially since I went to Catholic school for several years of my life...) I read aloud, "Pontius pih-lot-ee, pih-LOT-ee, pih-lot-EE." I knew in my head the first time I said it that it didn't sound right, so I said it again, thinking that if I emphasized a different syllable, it would be right. Wrong. So I said it a third time. Still wrong. Never did it occur to me that I was saying the wrong word COMPLETELY. Before I even realized what I had done, laughter broke out in this silent room, breaking the somewhat somber mood of the lesson. I had just made a total you-know-what of myself in front of the world's most judgemental age group. How EMBARRASSING! As red as I turned that night, it gave me a new nickname and all of my friends a good laugh for years to come. I still laugh at the thought of that moment, and am still called Pilates from time to time.

At that point in time, Windsor Pilates had just made a big boom onto the infomercial circuit. I'm fairly certain it must have been my subconscious coming through to tell me that I had been watching FAR too much television. A couple of years later (and about 2 years ago now) I was watching TV early on a Saturday morning and I had succomb to the genius marketing technique. I was SOLD on this exercise program and in just two weeks and $29.99 later, I was the proud new owner of the Windsor Pilates DVD set and a FREE Windsor Pilates Circle with a Circle workout DVD! I got that DVD in the mail and I started doing it - wow, gave me more of a workout than I ever thought possible! And would you know? I actually had more energy and strength! If only I had the will power to continue doing it. It's easy when there's no real accountability factor to let it go by the wayside. But I knew I liked it and I knew it worked. People started to see results. I started to FEEL results.

That's why when I finally got to the point again with my body where I knew I HAD to do something, I decided to start pilates classes. A couple of the girls at work take them and it's five minutes from our office. That makes it pretty convenient to go after work. Well I'm about 6 classes deep and I am completely HOOKED! It's slightly different from the mat pilates that I was doing at home, because we use machines, combined with some mat work, ball work, and Patti also throws in the circle from time to time! (Patti is also known as Patti Pilates in the circles I run in - oh, did I mention she is married to one of our underwriters and also happens to be Carlie & Josh's next door neighbor? Small World.) I love every minute of it! I never want the classes to end. It has given me more energy, strength, and most of all - has had a bigger impact on my emotional well-being than I EVER thought possible. Oh, and, I just have to say - I lost SEVEN pounds last week! I am so excited by how I feel that it has helped me make better food choices, and... drumroll please... inspired me to quit drinking soda! This is huge for me.

I do hope that the excitement continues and that I continue to reap the benefits from doing this. IT AIN'T CHEAP so I'm certainly having to make some adjustments and sacrifices - but the way I see it, it's keeping me out of trouble and it's really transforming my life. The attitude adjustment alone makes it all worthwile.

When I started telling people about it and what we do in class, I realized that it's hard to envision what you do when you are in a Pilates class unless you've actually seen it before, and I thought, "must search YouTube." Here's a video I found that shows a lot of what I get to do. I have no affilation whatsoever with the studio in this video, nor have I ever been there. Enjoy!