Week 26. 2024. What is Pilates? part 2 . The 34 Moves

The 34 Moves. What are those? What is this all about?

Joseph Pilates, a visionary in the realm of physical fitness, left behind a legacy that continues to shape the way we approach exercise today. Among his many contributions, perhaps one of the most influential is the 34 move mat sequence, a sequence of movements or exercises designed to incorporate strenght, stretch and coordination to promote strength, flexibility, and mind-body connection. Pilates believed that modern lifestyle, bad posture, and inefficient breathing lay at the roots of poor health. To combat this, he devised a series of 34 exercises and training techniques. These movements are performed in a sequence, mostly repeated 3 times with his belief being that 3 repetitions was sufficient to achieve the purpose

The original warm up is quite punchy and not what you might expect. You can see a video of this in my previous post of Pilates warming his class up with star jumps, spotty dogs and a high energy routine. From here, we stand, cross legs, fold arms and lower to the mat to start with The Hundred. This is all about the breath, oxygenating the body and really getting into lateral thoracic breathing. Next into Roll up and Roll over, appreciating spinal mobility and the sense of opposition or 2 way stretch. Into the One Leg Circle for some tough obliques focus before some release and "fun" in the Roll back or Rolling. We then go into the One leg stretch and Double leg stretch, adding power to press down onto the stomach and improve circulation to the digestive organs. Adding Romana's exercises here, we continue the "Abs 5" with One leg straight, Double leg Straight and Criss cross. Spine stretch follows and is quite welcome from the previous moves and is a super prep. for the Open leg rocker. Corkscrew can be a beast to master, keeping to rotation and not hip hitching. The Saw is a combination of the Spine Stretch and the Spine Twist before flipping prone for Swan Dive for a lovely Thoracic extension with some moments and power. Single and Double leg kick challenge stability while opening up the hip flexors and lengthening the Quadriceps. Neck pull is a tough one too before we move into the "inversion series" of the High Scissors, High Bicycle and then drop down into High Shoulder Bridge. Spine Twist is one you know well before the very cheeky Jack Knife which requires a strong upper body connection. The Side kick is ALL about stability through the centre, keeping shoulders and hips inline before we go into The Teaser, probably the most famous Pilates move - a lot harder than it looks. The Hip Twist is similar to Corkscrew in the sense of maintaining rotation not hitching, moving into Swimming which again, requires thoracic extension and opposition of the two way stretch. Leg Pull prone is often referred to as a Plank and then we go into Leg pull supine or up, which needs that open chest again. Side kick kneeling reduces your conection with the floor so a bit more challenge on stability and then we go into Boomerang which is complex but fun. Seal is often misunderstood but focus on the hip opener action followed by Crab which is precision and control. Rocking is a stomach massage and hip opener before moving into Control Balance. This is a tough one but so satisfying with a powerful hip opening action. The Push Up completes the series and this is a way to encapsulate all the elements of Pilates as you roll down, walk out, push up, walk in, roll up and repeat up to to 5 push ups.

This is the advanced description but we have so many ways to break down each and every exercise and make it inclusive for all. In my view, to attend an advanced class does not require you to do the moves at an advanced level but to have sufficient understanding and experience to adapt where you need. Those familiar to my classes know that I will refer to joint action, plane of movement, muscle groups and so on, and if you are for example, performing the Spine Twist, seated on a block with your knees soft, your arms folded, moving more slowly, is that not still a Spine Twist? While someone else has straight legs, wide arms and is adding power with pulse, you are both moving through the same joint action, using the same muscles and so on. Also, we can take a whole class to master one move - lets say for example that we want to perfect a Roll over. I will consider work to mobilise the spine, help us to understand the two way stretch or opposition, add some chest opener work and wake up the triceps, maybe lengthen the hamstrings - this might the 8 or 10 exercises before we put all the benefits of this preparation and work together to enable us to perform the move.

The 34 moves really is a joy to perform and we will be working on this (again) in the Autumn where we will go over some of the more complex moves, understand how to break down and adapt before starting to sequence and link. I am sure some of you can remember when we did "The Christmas 68"?? We went all the way through and then went all the way back and while we were all dreading it, how STRONG did we feel at the end! During lockdown when I moved us all online, we were meeting every single day and practising and practising and it is consistency that gets us the results . The beauty of this is that the body recognises the patterns and can almost be ahead of you - even if you are thinking "what next", your body is automatically moving into the next position. The purpose of habit is to save energy - the reason we have habits is so that we can perform daily tasks on automatic pilot without using energy to relearn all these things and The 34 Moves really embraces this.

What is your favourite move and why? and what do you absolutely hate.. and why? Personally, I LOVE so many moves but I find Hip Circles and Leg Pull supine the ones (or 2 of the ones!) I have to really work at. Mind you, I do not doubt for a moment that a fellow teacher would watch my practise and let me know I have a lot more than those 2 to work on.

I love sequences and I think we can pick and choose, mix it up and just have fun with it too to add some power, punch and variety.

We have had a wonderful few classes on the beach this week and it actually felt like Summer. I really enjoyed seeing lots of friendly faces joining me down at Tanners Lane as well as being able to share the outdoor shennangians with my online friends.

I really hope the weather allows us lots more opportunity to "Teach from the Beach" and do please join me and Clare next Wed 10th at 5.45pm for a class on the beach and a drink up at The East End Arms to officially launch Summer 24 (let's hope it isn't raining - that would be ironic).

Everyone is welcome and please call me for any details you need.

This week saw a few online members bumping into each other - 2 of you recognsied eachother at a graduation in Sherbourne and 2 or was it 3 of you bumped into one another at the sailing regatta at Salcombe.

For my part, an abosolute JOY to see one of my "ghost" members who work from the library and do not make live classes but made it to the beach so just greast to see you!

What is coming up.

As we slide towards the Summer hols, please keep an eye on the calendar. Clare and I will endeavour to keep you challenged, strong and motivated between us and I will always advise of any calendar changes. There may be a little give and take, while we ensure you get plenty of classes as always. Don't forget our extra class this coming Wed 10th on the beach. Clare and I are teaming up to teach half a class each before heading up the road to the pub for a drink or two to launch Summer 24. Details above. Please try and join us in person and if you can't make the class you are still of course welcome to join us for a drink. The class will also be live online for those further afield.

NEW IN LIBRARY (going up in the next couple of days... )

The July challenge (sorry it was late.. must try harder)

Clare's class this week (Clare's classes)

Friday strength class (Strength classes)

Just stop, breathe and become present (All levels) - EVERYONE needs to do this!

And finally......

Usain Bolt trained for FOUR YEARS to compete for 9 seconds. Just a thought if you feel like giving up...

Not sure about you but I was crying my eyes out, watching the Andy Murray interview last night. I am a huge Murray fan and will really miss our dour Scot. If that isn't an example of never giving up, I do'nt kow what is!

If you haven't read Judy Murray's autobiograhy, then I heartily recommend it - that woman has done so much for women in sport and having raised two feminist sons, gets my vote all the way ( but perhaphs today is not the day to talk about votes.)

I have talked in the July challenge about 21 days to build a new habit and enjoyed in a (my first of 21 ) podcast yesterday the explantion of a habit - a habit is the body's way of conserving energy by not having to waste brain power by relearning over and over.

Another part of the pod I really liked that I feel also is very relevant was as follows..

"The definition of addiction is to continue the behaviour despite knowing of adverese consequence"

While we assume this must be drugs or alchohol or food, it can also be exercise, sex, shopping, screens! .... research shows that texting while driving is more dangerous than drink driving so why do people do it, knowing the dangers?

Let's go back to the July challenge and maybe use this as an opportunity to think of what we can take up or give up?

This photo has nothing to do with anything other than I thought it was really funny. If you don't, you are far too young!

Have a great weekend everyone,

See you next week x

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Weekly Wrap up. Week 18. 2025.

By juliet • May 1, 2025

USE IT OR LOSE IT! I saw a post on instagram that I shared today. It is a video of a large family posing for a group photo, with many of them sat on the floor. Once the photo has been taken, they try to get up and that is where chaos happens (along with a lot of laughter) as they are clinging onto eachother, trying to get to their feet and getting into a total heap. Very funny... but also not... I was involved in a workshop today at Limewood and the phrase "Use it or Lose it" came up in the presentation. We all know the saying and can use it quite flippantly but how about acknowledging that if we no longer perform that particular activity, our body thinks it is no longer required and we find we CAN'T perform that movement. We need to condition our body and therefor when we first try a new exercise for example, we can feel quite unstable or uncoordinated and lacking in proprioception but as we repeat and practise, the move becomes more familiar and we grow in confidence and ability. Think of some of the sequences we do in Pilates or some of the more complex moves in our weights work - not for the faint of heart and performed only once we have built up the skills and have the coordination and understanding of what needs to go where. However as we stop doing those (or any other)moves they quickly become harder to reach. If you haven't seen it, do please watch "Secrets of The Blue Zones" on Netflix - about communities where people not only live beyond 100 but do so with good physical and mental health. It is a superb watch but the factors are the same in each community and one of them is of course, exercise, be it walking up a practically vertical hill to church or getting onto hands and knees to tend the garden daily. Whatever you do or don't do, please don't be the one rolling around because you cant get up from the floor!! Using it beyond all reason this weekend however are Lou and Clare - please join me in wishing them the very best of luck as they set off together at 6.45am on Saturday to run 100km around the Isle of Wight. If you recall, they did 50km last year and that achievement set them up for going the full distance this year. It also did something else as I went over to watch them and had a bad case of missing out, as I can no longer run and realised how much I missed the training and camaraderie of an endurance event and it was off the back of this experience that I came home and bought a new bike. So a year (and lots of cycling and joining a club) later, I am also off to the island on Sunday to cycle 100km on the IOW Randonnee. I respect that my challenge is nowhere near the scale of what Lou and Clare are undertaking but there are some big old hills over there... good job we have a Bank Holiday Monday to recover!!

Weekly Wrap up. Week 17. 2025.

By juliet • April 24, 2025

Blink and you miss it. There went Easter. I hope you all had a lovely time doing whatever you got up to and we now enter the summer term. I mean we don't really have terms but if we did, this is it... exams, summer uniform, netball and cricket and dusting off the bbq's. Personally, none of that really applies to me... well perhaps the summer uniform as I drag my shorts blinking and yawning from the back of the drawer. As for netball - I used to absolutely love it. I was always in the school team, playing Centre or Goal defence and did briefly join Lymington as an adult. When my girls were at prep. school, they reinstated a teachers v parents netball match and we won by a country mile -none of us really knew how but me being me, I went full out to start a mum's netball club one evening a week. Before we knew it, "friends" had mentioned us to the Bournemouth and Southampton leagues. This was very, very scary as we were just running up and down shouting "is that allowed? what are we supposed to do here? did that count?" so clearly in our infancy and anyway, we didn't have any matching kit but we did have a lot of fun - well, until someone went over on her ankle which promptly broke and that was the end of that. I have been spared life as a cricket mum or widow but sitting in a deckchair for hours in the sunshine pretending to watch sounds wonderful to me. As I watch my nephews revving up for the start of GCSE's, I thank my lucky stars those hideous days are behind me. I have a vivid memory of sitting at the kitchen table trying to revise while my mother sat outside in the garden listening to Wimbledon on the radio and the two are forever linked for me. Wimbledon with exams not my mother. Apparantly we have wonderful weather next week so dig out your sunscreen and if you can make it, I will be teaching on the beach for Monday and Tuesday's classes. We went through the 34 Moves recently and the upside down/inversion moves are usually the ones that need the most practise. You can really get a deep dive into these moves on the studio equipment if you ever go to a studio but we have several in our mat work - Roll over, Rolling moves, High bridge, Control balance, High Scissors and Bicycle. Remember that Joseph Pilates' philosophy was to perfect on the studio equipment and practise on the mat, hence we use all sorts of equipment and creativity to recreate as close to the studio work as we can for the vast majority of us who do not have access to a fully equipped studio. Why inversion? Gravity can lead to compression of the spine and their little shock absorbers known as discs that can become dehydrated. When we tip our body upside down, we can reverse the gravitational pull. This can help to create more space between the verterbrae and studies suggest that this allows for the discs' soft tissue to absorb moisture and rehydrate and plump up. Exercises like Roll over or the rolling moves can provide a massage for the spine and fascia as well as improving spinal mobility and of course, abdominal strength. (please note in photo above, my right arm is not perfect - my wrist should be flat and my arms could be stronger and better connected to the floor but it was the best pic I could find for now and I wasn't sharing that space with anyone else so it was a mediocre me or nothing!!!) Want more? Well, it is widely believed that being upside down can stimulate the lymphatic system and help with lymph drainage. Also the action of being upside down can increase blood flow to the stomach and therefor help with digestion and digestive issues. You don't need to be performing an advanced Control Balance move - some of the rolling moves and spinal extension we have been working on do the job in a modified way and anyhow, high blood pressure, glaucoma and spinal issues are some of the reasons why full, advanced inversion is not ideal - there are always ways to adapt, modify and practise safely. What we established in our 8am class yesterday was how many ways we can break down, build up and practise. For example, consider the Roll up, Roll down and Roll over as exactly the same exercise but variations come from the position you start from, how you work against gravity and whether it is your upper or lower body that moves. Thinking about Roll over, and going into the inverted positions (where your hands support you from under your hips), we worked on how to open up the chest, the need for strength through the traps, lats and triceps, length in the hamstrings, strength in the core and so much more. So for example, to improve High Scissors, you could consider side lying chest opener, Roll down with arms behind you, Saw and upper body only double leg kick - all moves to open up the chest and strengthen the upper body. In addition, hamstring and hip flexor stretches. Focus on pelvic floor and deep core connection so lots of abdominal and core strengthening- we could (and do) a whole class on moves to prepare us for one single and seemingly evasive exercise. What we do know is that to get better, we need to practise - a few daily exercises relevant to what you need to build on will make ALL the difference so.... with that in mind, I am going to start planning some workshop style classes again as we haven't done this for a while so your input would be welcomed. What moves really challenge you and what would you like to work on? I will get my creative hat on and build a class around the strength, stretch and mobility we need to focus on. What I continue to hear from you (and feel for myself) is the benefit of building strength from lifting weights and how that really helps with your Pilates progess. Isn't it great!!

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Weekly Wrap up. Week 9. 2025. It's nearly our 5th Birthday!

By juliet • February 27, 2025

I very nearly missed it. I was thinking about an April challenge or similar when I suddenly realised that WE ARE 5! In March, we will have been online for a whopping 5 years and as we grow ever stronger, this needs to be celebrated! Friday 17th March 2020. I was in a totally empty Beaulieu Village hall as everyone was staying home and with legs shaking and heart racing, I leant my phone up against a speaker on the stage and started my first ever Facebook LIve class. A lot has happened in 5 years and we are all far more tech savvy now but this was ground breaking for me at least and I was terrified. Seeing little hearts and smiley faces floating up the screen as more and more people logged on was the biggest support I could have imagined. That week before what we all knew was coming, I was facing the “what’s next” along with millions of others. For me, “what next” was a 3 day non stop run of no sleep (adrenaline has many uses) and a huge learning curve. Along with fellow fitness professionals, I was learning how to use Zoom, membership platforms, booking programs, how to manage my website, multi screening, recording and editing. There were a lot of tears and coffee and I did not see my bed for 3 nights straight. BUT…. (indulge me here please) scrolling back through my old blog posts (still there for you to see!) I saw my first post about Live, free Facebook Pilates on March 20th and my first calendar of classes the same week as we went into lockdown. I went live, online for free every day, one way or another for 6 weeks right at the start. It nearly killed me and how Joe Wicks kept going, I do not know but I am so proud of that and what we achieved together. I was reaching into countries all over the world as at that time, not as many people were offering this and as everyone was at home, time zones were not as relevant. Friends and family were sharing the links so that they could do classes together and see eachother from wherever they were. To be honest, it is all a bit of a blur (as I am sure it is for many, many people) as I just fought hard to save my business and my sanity. I do vividly remember one class where we had zooms from Australia, America, Qatar, Dubai and Mallorca. I wrote it down on my office whiteboard where it stayed for years. It was just surreal and I honestly could not believe this was me! I was doing all this on my laptop mirrored to my TV, in my lounge! You saved me! I was on my own and horribly lonely and isolated and slowly going a bit mad and “having” to log on daily and be positve and upbeat and full of energy to motivate and inspire you genuinely saved me. I have removed most of the old lockdown content and anything that still triggers me into a shivver of how awful it was, but one thing that I hold in my heart with enormous pride is my online community. I am more proud of this than I can begin to descibe. You are my family. I created this, built and nurtured it and continue to be indescribably proud of what we have all acheived together. Our Christmas lunches, when I sit back and see so many friends, the care and what we share - please know that it means the world to me. We have got up to SO MUCH online over 5 years. I am not going to go back over it because a) it is all there in old blogs and social media posts and b) full disclosure, I am only truly, this last year, coming out of what the lockdown era took out of me and I do not wish to revisit it but…. True friendships have grown and we all know we really are “SO MUCH MORE THAN PILATES”. Only last week when a group of us met for a walk, I took so much from hearing you talking about how much YOU get from it - not just the exercise but the daily morning chats and check in’s, the community and support - that you cannot believe how you used to do one class a week, whizz in, whizz out and that was that until the following week whereas now you are doing multiple classes a week and what’s apping fellow members, logging in to see friends and sharing so much. I have been able to teach from Cornwall, Botswana, Croatia ,Pembrokeshire, the local beach…. and as my feet get ever more itchy, the wonders of online means have van, have wifi - you can come with me! I have never wanted to go down the commerical studio route. That was never for me. Far too restrictive - and as online works, the world awaits! So here we are. This last week we have beamed into MELBOURNE (furthest reach so far!), Singapore, Tanzania, Germany, France, Spain, Greece and never forgetting the Isle of Wight… we have more members than ever, a wonderful variety of classes and the library has had another update with more to come. Teatime talks are shaping up (new page on the website under construction), we have 2 socials in the diary and it’s still only February. This year is my 20th anniversary as a Pilates teacher and 22 years since I started out as a Personal trainer. As the wonderful Master Teacher Michael King (who I am going to for a week of Pilates in Crete in May) says - “Old Pilates teachers never retire. We just roll down one day and never roll back up” For our fifth anniversary, it seems only right to go back to where it started so bear with me and watch this space as I plan a collection of extra FREE classes available to EVERYONE, some on Zoom, some on instagram live. This will be week commencing March 24 March and PLEASE put Saturday March 29th in your diary and come to Beaulieu village hall for old time’s sake for a FREE class open to ALL starting at 9am - and coffee and pastries up the road afterwards at Steffs. I will sort the times and days and post next week and in our members’ calendar but everyone is included. Do also keep March 11th in your diary for the first of our Teatime talks - again, open to all. The wonders of being online.