50 shades of Pilates!

Tonight I attended my third session of my latest hobby at the new Pilates Studio that has opened in Richmond.  I am already a member of Your Gym, which is behind the new centre, and I am a massive fan of their set up.  I had started to research which gym to join when I moved to Richmond in the months before I arrived but was getting slightly concerned about the massive monthly fees some of them seemed to be charging.  Fortunately on our first day in Richmond we stumbled across Your Gym by accident as we were trying to find our way from the riverside to the town centre and as soon as I entered the place I knew I had to join.  Sometimes I really do believe in fate and I honestly think that I was guided down that side street by a greater force in order that I would find Your Gym.

Your Gym has a great selection of training equipment from the more traditional machines you would expect to find in any gym to power plates, ViPR equipment, TRX bands and Kettlebells.  The best thing about Your Gym is that there are always people on hand who are willing to set you a programme or guide you through your workout.  It also follows my preferred style of training, similar to tabata training, where it's all about working out smart not long.  Interval training is key and my fitness levels, stamina and strength have gone through the roof!

The Pilates Studio has only been open a few weeks but has already started to attract some major A List celebrities (I won't be indiscreet and say who but I will say it's my favourite celebrity in the whole wide world).  However, tonight it was my turn to put all of the equipment to the test.  I will warn you that I am one of the least flexible people ever so you are not going to see the best posture and positioning in the world from me but I do like to remind myself that I have only been seriously into exercise for the last 2.5 years and so I have 24 years of laziness to undo.  When I first started with my personal trainer and doing bootcamps I couldn't even do a sit up but I am progressing steadily and I am determined to continue to develop my core strength and fitness.

The studio is small offering intimate and personal class sizes.

To warm up I started with some stretching exercises on what is known as The Barrel.  First off I did a quad stretch followed by a stretch of the glutes below.  Having the equipment to aid your technique really helps you to push into the stretch and feel it deeply.

Trying that little bit harder to sit back into the stretch.

I then used the barrel to get in a hamstring stretch, I suffer from really tight hamstrings and this is the best equipment I've used so far to get a deep hamstring stretch where I can touch my toes.

Finally we did some back bends which, as you can probably see from my facial expression, are a lot harder than they appear to be!

We then moved on to the back of the reformer machine and did some squats.  The instructor was getting a little bit frustrated at our technique but I finally got it as seen here, using very little arm and focusing all the attention into the legs to squat down in a controlled manner keeping the back straight.

Next was on to some core exercises.  This is the area of the body I most need to strengthen up and it is only when you are shown how to do some of these abdominal exercises properly that you realise how weak your core strength is.  The machine below is The Cadillac and I was using the springs to pull out to the chest and then lower myself down before peeling myself back up using only my stomach muscles to do so.  A few of these and you really start to feel an ache in your muscles!

Next was lifting the hips up into a bridge with a leg extension.  This was actually a lot harder than it appears as you have to keep the bar still whilst maintaining straight legs and back.  The raised leg is supposed to be perfectly straight as well but I am not quite at that stage yet!

Finally, I finished off with The Reformer, this move below really stretched out the inner thighs, once I had overcome the fear that I would lose control and inadvertently do the splits (which would result in a lot of pain for someone as stiff as me)!

Here is a final bridge on the reformer, this really gets your muscles trembling after a while.

Pilates is the best toning tool in my opinion and I am hoping to see some massive differences over the coming months if I keep up a couple of sessions a week.  I still look back fondly to when I lived in Spain and was at my thinnest and Pilates was the only exercise I did.  I'm sure tomorrow I'll wake up a bit achy but that's always a sign of a good workout!