In honor of #marchmatness2020, I am dedicating this post to my journey into pilates.
Every year in March the pilates community posts about how pilates is for every body and every body type. Mat pilates can be performed in your home, your office or you can take a class. The point is to make it accessible to all and reap the benefits.
Let me begin by sharing my passion for pilates as well as my story.
It was 2010 and I was dating my husband. We had progressed to the point where I wanted to take him to meet my family at a christening. My husband is Cuban, and can surely dance. We started to make our way on the dance floor to dance the night away, and that’s when it happened.
Back up for a minute, I am a fitness professional and I had been teaching almost 3 decades when I met him. I taught spin, step, kickboxing, yoga, heck I even taught a slide board class. Movement was in my blood. However dance, not so much. If you know me at all, I am so athletic, I can’t dance without looking awkward 🙂 In fact, one time a Zumba instructor didn’t show up and they asked me to fill in, I am a team player but explained to the class, unless you get me some wine, I can’t dance LOL. That is the truth,
Let me preface, we were at a christening so I had a glass or two of wine. Now, my very hot cuban husband was moving his hips dancing the night away. This girl has hips so I decided to use them. We danced, we shook, we twerked lol ok, we danced until, I fell to my knees.
Yup, right there at the christening, went down couldn’t stand up, couldn’t put pressure on my hip or leg. I had to be carried out to the emergency room with my family and my new-ish boyfriend. UGH, I was so embarrassed. I mean I exercise for a living, why should this happen?
Fast forward to my visit with a non surgical orthopedic dr. (YES, they are out there) he told me I needed to get an MRI on my back. I said, it’s not my back, it’s my hip that’s where the pain is and I can’t stand up or put pressure on it. I was insistent because I was a fitness professional right. He was right, it was my back. I had bulging and herniated discs L4, L5 and SI syndrome. WTF?
What he said now, changed my life and the direction of my career in fitness and movement. He said, you need to take pilates. PILATES! That’s boring and I am not a dancer.
Pilates is prehab before you need rehab.
I ran to my closest pilates studio and the instructor was also a Physical Therapist, it was a win win. For months and months I started slow, mastered every small intrinsic exercise, realized how I literally had no core strength and no core stability even though I had been moving all my life. I have scoliosis so I also had been seeing a chiropractor 3x week just to keep me pain free.
You always hear me say, Pilates is a practice and I truly mean that. I practice pilates and the rest is history. I teach, I educate but most of all I practice pilates for me and my body.
Sidebar, when we were in the hospital, mascara dripping down my face, me crying in pain, my hot cuban boyfriend, now my husband, told me he loved me for the first time.
Let me know if have any questions and please share this post.
