Weekly Wrap up. Week 45. 2024. Consistency is key!

There are many positives about running your own business and being your own boss. However, there are some unavoidable bumps in the road from time to time. One of those for me was finding my beloved Labrador Bertie collapsed last night which caused me angst for more than one reason. Firstly and of course most importantly was Bertie's health but immediately I was faced with what was going to happen for everyone who was expecting to join one of 2 classes in the morning while I had to step away and deal with the immediate issue.

It has taken me many, many (many, many!!) years to have the confidence to choose to prioritise me (or in this case, Bertie) and on this occasion I cancelled classes in order to take Bertie to the vet.( I will have to add to our list of functional exercises, picking up and carrying a 38kg Labrador out of the house and into my van.)

However we are a community and support each other and that was demonstrated very much by a) me worrying so much about letting everyone down and looking at where I can add the missed classes back in as catch up's and b) the many lovely kind messages I have received throughout the day offering care and support. Thank you very much for that. It is truly valued. Bertie has had excellent care and the next few days will tell us more. Seadown Vets are just up the road from me and have taken the very best care of me and my fur family for decades.

So.... back to the title of "Consistency is key"... although I think this links in. We all know that in order to get results we need to repeat and repeat again whatever our end goal is. I have lost count of the amount of times people say to me "I have never been able to do xxxx" to which I ask how many times they practise and the answer is always.. never! In which case... what do we expect?

When I was teaching students for their Pilates and Gym instructor exams, one of my favourite quotes with regards to preparing for their practicals was "practise until you get it right and then practise until you cannot get it wrong."

In order to improve, we need to keep turning up. Consistency is the game changer.

There are any number of reasons why we can excuse ourselves and skip a class or training session and I can assure you, I am an expert on this. Despite popular myth, I am not a machine and there are many times I am lying in bed thinking that an extra hour under the duvet is FAR preferable to getting up to do exercise. When we do override the negative voice though and turn up - those are the sessions about which we feel the most virtuous or feel we have really achieved. I know I do. Powering on through the negative voice and turning up and doing it - those are the biggest wins. Having the self discipline to get on that mat despite really not feeling like it... that is the biggest success! What happens on the mat is secondary.... getting there when you really don't feel like it - that is achievement.

The real key is to make it habit - make it a part of our lifestyle so that it is just "what we do". Why wait until Monday or January or until the holidays are over or we have more time or after we have finished painting the hall or once we have finally tidied the loft? Those things will ALWAYS be there and we will be able to add more and more tasks. We know this.

One thing us "onliners" have discussed when we get together is the community spirit we feel online and I really do treasure this. We have all been meeting up multiple mornings a week FOR YEARS and really know and care about each other. It isn't just about the exercise - it is a part of our routine on one or more mornings a week. Getting up, setting up, meeting up and working out. It has become just part of our daily routine. This is what makes taking part so much easier - you know where you are, what to expect and it fits into your daily life, without you having to think about carving out the time.

What is important however is not to lose momentum. Isn't it easy to skip a class because you are too busy or going on holiday and that one class quickly becomes 2 classes to a week and before you know it, rather than your regular habit, it has slid to the back of the pile. From here, it takes SO MUCH more effort to start again and pick it up.

In order to keep moving forwards, just keep turning up. Easy to say? I have days (doing my own training) when the high intensity or weights session I had planned just seems too much and I want to skip. Never more so than now as there are bugs and sniffles and dark mornings and energy levels can dip.

However I have learned through experience to still get onto the mat at the allocated time but I will do a stretch session or even some simple meditation and breath work.

Before, I would have definitely just avoided it altogether but I have found out how beneficial it is just to keep turning up.

I may not be doing what I had originally planned but I am still keeping to the plan - keeping that time for me and not quickly filling it with other things that are queuing up to take over. Skip that one session and it is incredibly easy to lose that routine.

I know what we are like. We think "oh what is the point, if I am not doing much, what will I get out of it?" ... but if we turn up we are still getting some mind body connection, being accountable, sticking to the plan..... just doing half as much, and taking our time will still tick all the aforementioned boxes and we get to leave our mat feeling we have at least "done something"...even if it is a 10 min stretch. If you are not up to doing that tough abs class or do not have time to do a full hour then 15 mins stretch and mobility is still ticking the box and is achieving so much more than avoiding it altogether.

No-one ever regretted the workout they did. Don't let the avoidance become habit.

After the day I have had (writing this on Thursday), I can promise you that my cosy sofa is very appealing but I am now going to practise what I preach and I am heading to my mat for some gentle stretch and breath work. It isn't the tough Pilates sequences class I had planned for 8am or the Back Care work I was teaching at 9am but it will take me out of my head for half an hour, stretch me out, relax me and will keep me on the straight and narrow before Shetland on Iplayer and choccy biccies win the day and talk me out of it.

Members updates.

The Strength challenge has got off to a flying start and I am delighted at how many of you messaged me to say you did a weights class yesterday in place of the cancelled classes.

Tueday and Friday week 1 classes are in your library in the Strength collection.

Also added this week is Tuesday's technique class (Technique collection) and today's 9am stretch will be going up later today as 2 versions - the full 45 mins will be in "All levels" and it will be split into 2 halves as a shorter post class option at the bottom of the "strength" collection.

Next week -

Week 2 of our Tues/Fri Strength classes.

In our Thursday 8am Technique clinic, we will cover Bicycle, Crab, Single and Double leg Kick, One leg circle to name a few.

Friday 9am Stretch - please bring your roller and resistnace band.

I do ask you to check the calendar for class info so that you konw what to expect and to allow you to prepare. Always give me a call if you have any questions about the classes.

Wrapping up in the words of James Clear from Atomoic Habits -

"True behaviour change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation but the only reason you will stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity.

Anyone can convince themselves to go the gym or eat healthily once or twice but in order to stick with the long term you need to shift the belief behind the behaviour. Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who you are.

Have a great weekend 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.