Hello all you lovely Pilates peeps!
Well this post is loooong overdue.
Recently I’ve just returned from my first UK Adventure of the year and it’s been grand.
Many thanks to Jayne O’Brien and all the amazing instructors I met at Equinox Kensington in London. UK hospitality at its finest!
And a big congratulations to new mum Amy Kellow (my Vintage Pilates classmate from The Work and Teaching the Work). What a pleasure to have a reunion in your studio Everybody Pilates. Amazing to see your staff and clients again!
It was such a pleasure to meet and work with such fine teachers and blog subscribers. Thanks so much for all your kind words. Your feedback warms my heart and is truly TRULY appreciated.
Keep up all your hard and sweaty work, hang on to your dynamic opposition and I’ll be back in Portsmouth this October.
I hope you’ve had a chance to check out this extra post to somehow make up for my absence of the last 3 weeks. I wrote it a while back for Gratz. You know I love to play Pilates Detective: Andrea and the Case of “Why is it called the Cadillac?”
30 Days of Wunda: The good, the ugly, the confused
Thank you to everyone who undertook my recent Wunda Chair Challenge.
And now for my Pilates confession…
Full disclosure: this one dusted me.
Gone were the heady times luxuriating over the Small Barrel.
My body didn’t feel as good after my Wunda as I had anticipated. Hmmm…
I’d gotten better at some of the exercises but where was the amazing integrated feeling Pilates creates in my body? Randomly I felt stiff and couldn’t figure out why.
Why did my back feel amazing on the Barrel?
Why has the Wunda Chair left me feeling gimpy?
Don’t blame the exercise: Wunda Edition
A little factoid about your body on Pilates: The body gets used to feeling good.
If your workout behavior changes – or God forbid stops – the body gets cranky.
“WTF? What happened to those Pilates exercises you were doing?”
So again a little detective work was in order.
First off we’ve got our beloved Pilates System
Like a well-tuned orchestra, each apparatus has its part to play.
The Wunda Chair is not our major apparatus that reforms the body. It is not the Reformer. It functions more efficiently as a place to address a specific issue. This does not mean one cannot get a fabulous workout on the Wunda Chair, but often we’ve got to show up with all our stuff at the ready.
We don’t seek out the Wunda Chair for full support and assistance, right?
For my Wunda challenge I had to ask:
What is happening naturally on the Small Barrel that I can’t find in the Chair exercises?
The brilliance of the Small Barrel – which I discovered and which many of you reported – was the way the apparatus supports, informs and corrects the back.
For me in particular the Small Barrel alerted, assisted and supported me to correct my imbalance – one side of my powerhouse that doesn’t like to work very well.
The Wunda Chair by its very nature and construction offers no feedback or support for the back. So my imbalance gets a free ride.
In this way the Barrels and the Chairs make a good team.
Good to know.
Where to go from here?
Now armed with new information from the Small Barrel, I know how to work the weaker side of my powerhouse. My new plan is to start all over again with my 30 Day Wunda Chair challenge.
And I mustn’t neglect my Small Barrel exercises! I learn so much from The Small Round One. I didn’t know how good I had it over there…
I shall report back!
A little while back I got all gaga over the Small Barrel Project. Serendipitously I was strolling through my notes from Teaching the Work and found this gem:
“Spine Corrector: It cures all.” – Jay Grimes
And to that I say “Repetition is the mother of all learning.”
One more time and I’ll have it!
6 Responses
Another 30!! I will anxiously await your findings! And I totally agree, I know we spoke of how the Wunda doesn’t exactly “flow” like the Mat and Reformer but man, I tell you that 30 day challenge really offered me strength; even if not doing every exercise on it totally right and never even lifting the pedal a centimeter in the Star, the strength still awakened…no support makes people stronger on all fronts ;)…but some support is nice too!
I raise my Martini glass to you lovely lady! Well done for even attempting the chair challenge! Brava brava!! I haven’t been near mine these last few weeks! Eek! I’ve been too busy trying to catch up with mastering those front splits and Russian splits and all splits thereof… plus I seem to be obsessed with knee stretches …. needless to say I am far from mastering any of these! But, it’s the trying that counts I guess!!
So looking forward to finally meeting you in person this summer…
#rockon Cor 🙂 xoxo
Alessandra –
Yes – it is good for you to become obsessed with the Knee Stretches – I applaud you! Let’s have a rose / Knee Stretch love fest this summer 🙂 xox
Now that sounds like a fine idea! Will we be doing both at the same time I wonder?! ????????????
Oh my – LOL 🙂
xox
Yes – I will start my 2nd go-round on the 30 days soon. I am wrangling my imbalance very nicely now – got a rude awakening on the Side Splits in my Reformer workout yesterday actually – I can’t go out as far with the carriage as I am used to now that I can feel my one side disconnect. I was like – wow – where did that go? And then I moved out the carriage staying connected and it did not go out very much at all LOL. So yes, my 30 day challenge is imminent! xo see you tomorrow!