It's our 2nd Anniversary!!

TWO YEARS ONLINE!



 

 Happy 2 years ONLINE!!!


I mean technically I was not fully yet online - but the cogs were whirring, the plans were forming and we were, as of 8pm 2 years ago today, locked down. 


THREE DAYS…. No sleep, a lot of tears and some pretty fantastic anxiety attacks and we were off!!! Straight into a full month of Facebook lives… every single day…  It was very exciting and very terrifying and so we were launched online!!


WHAT a couple of years it has been. To think back to those early days when we were all a bit trepidatious of this thing “Zoom” and how did one sign up and what was mute and quite honestly, just what was the etiquette?


Passwords did NOT work, wifi was being stolen by children homeschooling and it was too much bother. Spouses tended to wander semi naked, post shower in the back ground and pets and small children bombed the class….those days when no-one was quite sure who could actually see what and OH the delight when it was realised that you could stay in your pyjamas and forget about your hair.... well, YOU could....!!!!


Fast forward and we are quite the online community. I am proud to have taught live into 11 countries and counting with the grand accolade of being recognised, half asleep and staring at my coffee, at 6am at Bristol Airport just a few weeks ago by someone who’s mother had joined from Bahrain. Bertie has been recognised several times as “the Pilates dog” … we are, I believe, quite established!


Think back to Lockdown 1 when lots of you joined every single day and how STRONG and FLEXIBLE you all became with your daily practise. Lots of you accomplished some moves that had evaded you for years and with the help of toilet rolls, tins of soup, towels, dressing gown cords and a lot of laughter, we got very creative and incredibly strong.


Do you remember our first online Summer party when we all wore hats and danced to ABBA in our sunny gardens or going into Autumn and playing online Charades which worked suprisingly well. 


We have had “From the Sofa” sessions including our wonderful Pelvic floor workshops, cookery demonstrations, read the book and meet the author, skincare tutorials and our back care and common injuries tutorial. 


We had the 28 days live on Facebook at the start of Lockdown, all free, all recorded and all loaded into my blog, we had the November challenge which saw me posting every single day, including dressing for dinner Friday, socially distanced sparklers, relax and read a book, dancing for exercise….. and who could forget or indeed, keep requesting Pilates and Prosecco (oft repeated elsewhere but you saw it here first and it even got a mention on BBC’s Saturday Kitchen!! 


Who could forget the Bond inspired week of classes to celebrate the new movie launch, our Olympics themed month of classes  and two year’s of Christmas jumper day and The 12 moves of Christmas…. Not to mention HIIT, Circuits, Power, Back care, Mobility and Stretch, small equipment, Technique Tuesday, upside down and back to front, Pilates and the wall, my Teacher trainer workshops, sequence and flow, Abs burner, weights and bands…Rollers, Magic Circles, The Pole, The fit band, resistance band, The 34 moves.. forwards AND back again, our “between lock down” live classes with coffee and cake in the Forest when we got mugged by a herd of donkeys……We have had Sports Specific classes where I have welcomed horse riders (we used kitchen chairs), Pilates for Golf, for Running, for Tennis, for Sailing....


We have got to know each other virtually. Certainly we have missed the face to face interaction but we have shared SO much by zooming into each other’s houses….. We sing happy birthday, greet new babies and puppies…admire house moves, envy at holiday destination zoom ins, .....there have been new friendships formed when people realise that they live near by, we have sourced exclusive wallpaper, dog sitting companies, flight dilemmas, plumbers and decorators, advice on technology admin - only recently one member visited another who they found lived very close to research rowing machines…. We have house guests and family members joining in, mothers and daughters, sisters and friends all zooming in from different countries to see each other and to say that they can do the same class together from London, Dubai, The USA, Greece, France, Bahrain and so many more as well as those scattered across the UK - in one class we had Cornwall to Perthshire to Pembrokeshire to Dublin. 



I think one of the best stories is the Grandma FaceTiming family in Canada after one full lockdown and telling her (utterly stunned, teenage) grandkids that her wifi was weak so she was hot spotting from her mobile data and was screen sharing from her laptop onto her tv so that she could see them all so much more clearly. All tricks learned from our community where people found skills they never knew they had and shared their knowledge to help others join in.


So, as I continue to have sound and camera difficulties (consistency is KEY), and we are technically no longer “The Lounge” but “The Studio” aka my spare bedroom… as we no longer have to cope with Bertie the Brilliant Barging into class (do miss that a bit), as we see new members still joining and our online community growing ever stronger, it just remains for me to say THANK YOU ALL for your support, your humour, your energy, your friendship, your loyalty, your checking your phone when you think I can't see you, YOUR CRAWLING ON HANDS AND KNEES TO GET YOUR COFFE THINKING YOU ARE BELOW THE CAMERA, views of your ceilings, your wonderful pyjamas, your pretending to freeze when really you are just having a lie down….your pets and kids joining in, your cat's bottom in front of your camera, your patience, your hard work and last but not least, your subscriptions…. Here’s to a very happy life online. 


So - WHY are we staying online? Well, here are a few from me and below are a few from you!!!


Cost - for the same price as you used to pay for one class a week, you now have access to 7 live classes a week and a library of hundreds of classes on demand


Convenience - no parking, petrol, commuting, traffic jams and faffing. No childcare issues when someone is ill at home. Being able to sign for a parcel, let the builder in, be around for the isolating child. Being able to join in when you are isolating. Being able to join in when I am isolating!.


Time - opening your screen 5 mins before and being straight back into your life seconds after.


Accessibility- from wherever you are which includes bedrooms, kitchens, landings, hallways, conservatories, garages, Premier Inns, holiday homes, motor homes, gardens, abroad and at home.


Community - being able to sit in your own kitchen with a coffee and chat with your online friends before the class


There are just a few reasons why I think it works!!!


Jx 




As to WHY JULIET’S PILATES ONLINE? ……in your words… 



“‘Why Juliets’s Pilates Online’


The only good thing to come out of the pandemic was to be reunited with Juliet’s Pilates again.


The only downside to moving to Somerset in December 2021 was leaving Juliet’s Pilates behind, and the friends I had made at the gym and in the classes. So when Juliet went online in March 2020 it was a pure joy to be reunited, to be able to do ‘real time’ classes with others at a time we could only leave home for an hour a day and to feel we hadn’t been truly cut off from humanity. 


Now, even though we are free, it is just perfect to connect online to do just as strenuous classes as if we had Juliet breathing down our necks in the flesh, four days a week, with others we can count as friends, and all without having to drive and park. Even from miles away Juliet’s beady eyes can see if we aren’t doing it right! If we can’t make a class there is an online library of countless classes of all abilities.


The true joy to be able to do regular Pilates with Juliet online, who makes every class interesting and different, is immeasurable. It may be virtual but we still have time for a chat and a laugh and it really is as if we are in the same room.


Keep up the good work Juliet and never come offline.

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“Dear Juliet,


Your Zoom class has been a wonderful link to normal life from the grey clouds of the Covid pandemic. Juliet M remembers me saying, as we heard of the first outbreak in Wuhan, that it would be with us within two weeks! I got back from NZ on 16th March and J encouraged me to sign up almost immediately. 


Your determination to master the necessary technical skills has always amazed me and I am sure you have had to pay considerable amounts for all sorts of kit. The Green Goddess look is one I remember!“



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“Hi Juliet,

Simple. Because you are the best of some ten Pilates Instructors I have had in over twenty years and I have now been working with you for over ten years. I can understand what you are attempting from your instructions without having to watch your demonstration so can close my eyes and concentrate on getting it right. From you I have learned a massive amount about how my muscles and skeleton work.”


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You kept us sane when we needed you most. Now we have fabulous classes we can do anywhere, anytime. xx


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You've been incredible - you bring so much enthusiasm and joy xxx



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Happy 2nd Anniversary! And thank you for helping me get through the last two years - I love my mat time with you, even if sometimes it might not look like I do!!!!


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SO glad I was introduced to @julietspilates!

                                                             

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............and HERE'S to the next 20 years!!!!!!






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!!

Weekly Wrap up. Week 16. 2025.

By juliet • April 17, 2025
Make it a lifestyle, not a duty.

Weekly Wrap up. Week 15. 2025

By juliet • April 10, 2025
On the beach, meeting our challenges and other bits and bobs

Weekly wrap up. Week 14. 2025.

By juliet • April 3, 2025
Spring Reconditioning.

Weekly Wrap up. Week 13. 2025

By juliet • March 30, 2025
It's a busy one... but then, when isn't it?

Weekly Wrap up. Week 12. 2025

By juliet • March 21, 2025
Quick weekly touching base!

Weekly Wrap up. Week 11. 2025

By juliet • March 13, 2025
Juliet's Pilates was live. 17 March 2020

Weekly Wrap up. Week 10. 2025

By juliet • March 6, 2025
It's a busy one... but then, when isn't it?

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.
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