January client of the month is Erin Tomlinson! Erin has been a twice a month member of Janae Luxe Pilates since February of 2017. She is strong, smart, funny and an overall joy to be around, from the minute I met her! Erin came to Pilates already pretty aware of her body in space, because she has been doing Yoga for several years, and even became a certified Yoga instructor just before starting Pilates.
March is just a few days away, and Janae Luxe Pilates is going to participate in March MATness! What is March MATness, you ask? Each day in the month of March we are going to try to post a picture doing one exercise from the list of exercises in the Classical Mat Pilates series. It's a social media project started by Benjamin Degenhardt the owner of 360 Pilates. Using the power of hashtags we will be showing our love of Pilates to the world!
In my quest for knowledge, I come across many articles that are very helpful to me as a Pilates instructor, and I try to impart that knowledge to my clients.
Here is a great article that I came across recently from Adrian Farrell MSTAT of Alexander Technique London, on SITTING! Seems like something so simple but I love the way he breaks things down here. Enjoy.
Stand on your bottom, what?! The truth about sitting.
I don't like to teach from an overly anatomical view, too much detail to think about in day to day living. I'm much more interested in the way we think and react, rather than what we think about, but this is something really useful for you to consider.
Look at how the bottom of the spine joins with the pelvis. What changes to that relationship when the weight bearing changes from going through your hips, and ultimately to the ground via your feet, to going through your sit bones into your chair? Not much! You'll notice that both the hip joints and the sit bones are below the sacral-iliac joint, that is, where the base of the spine, the sacrum, fuses with the pelvis.
The Plank exercise is one of the best total body exercises that one can do. We’ve all heard that, and it’s totally true. The problem with the plank, is that no matter how many times we look at that photo, it’s still a really hard exercise to get RIGHT! When it’s right, it’s challenging. When it’s wrong, it’s challenging AND painful! The plank should be tough, it’s working your core, your arms, your thighs, your shoulders, not to mention those weak little wrists that start burning a few seconds in.
It really doesn’t matter if you do your plank on your knees, or you toes. If you can’t lift your knees off of the ground, that’s ok. Keep working on your knees, you’ll build the strength eventually. If your wrists hurt because you’ve got an injury, it’s perfectly fine to do your planks on your elbows. If you are able to do them on your hands, you’re going to get that arm workout that you won't get if you’re on your elbows.
So how do you get it right without someone like me standing over you, poking and pushing and pulling your body into the perfect plank?
It seems these days that everyone is having a hard time either falling asleep, staying sleep, or getting good sleep.
If you are among this group people that find yourself a bit sleep deprived, don’t fret, there are things you can do short of taking dangerous, addictive sleep medications.
Time to examine your day. What are you doing right? What are you not doing right?
When I began practicing Pilates for myself, I weighed 175lbs. On my weight loss journey, I had already began to make dietary changes that led me to lose 12lbs before I started Pilates. So after about 3 months of Pilates twice per week, EVERY week….consistently, I lost about 15lbs more. For the next 6 months, I continued to practice Pilates twice per week and watch my diet. The scale hovered at around 158-163 during that time. I was not discouraged or upset at the lack of continued weight loss, because something even better happened….I lost 3 dress sizes!
