Running the Pilates Road

I’ll never forget the day I decided to finally begin a journey I had been putting off for nearly 10 years. I was 31 and it was a morning like every other morning, where I crawled out of bed in pain. Years as a high level volleyball player through college, combined with many more years of pounding it on the pavement in my running shoes, as well as competing in Ironman distance triathlon, had turned my morning wake ups into slow rolls out of bed and hobbles into the kitchen to make the day’s first cup of coffee. Some days it was my back that hurt, some days my neck, some days my feet and some days I just hurt everywhere.

This morning was different. It was different because I was finally fed up with the hundreds of hours, and thousands of dollars, I had spent laying on massage tables and chiropractic beds without any long lasting relief. I was too young to hurt this bad and knew that if I didn’t make the leap now, I never would.

I started researching the different roads I could travel to become a Pilates’ teacher as there were so many options to choose from. I spoke with other instructors, visited studios, and researched a multitude of teaching methods before deciding on the Balanced Bodies Method of Pilates. Like all Pilates’ methods, this method was going to be daunting, even coming into it with 10 years as a professional personal trainer and a degree in Human Kinetics. I left the studio I was currently working in and moved my business to a new home, where I could train my clients downstairs and spend my off hours studying in the Pilates studio upstairs.

The entire process took over four years to complete. The first year was spent working on my own body with a private teacher and exploring the movements Joseph created over 100 years ago. Through this I started to understand how the body works as a whole and why my past methods of fixing the symptoms had been unsuccessful. A year into my own studies I took my first three day intensive Pilates module, which focused on the mat repertoire, and that was even more eye opening than I had imagined. I knew this was going to transform me as a trainer, a coach and an athlete.

Over the next two years I studied Pilates with more intent than I had put into anything. I spent hours on each movement. Studying it. Feeling it. Teaching it. I wanted, and needed, to know how it felt in every inch of my body so that I could then not only teach it to my athletes but understand how it felt in every inch in their body. A year after my course, a year where every spare moment was spent studying, learning and practicing, I finally wrote my Balanced Bodies Comprehensive Pilates exam, which has brought me to where I am today.

I come to the Pilates world as an athlete. As an inflexible athlete who spent most of her career in pain. I have lacked range of motion my entire life and because of that I have compensated, or powered, my way through all of my movements. I have had every bone and muscle worked on, at some point, by a massage therapist, physiotherapists or a chiropractor. I have been a swimmer, a basketball player, a volleyball player, a soccer player, a runner, a triathlete, a cyclist, a mountain biker, a snow boarder and a skate skier. I get movement, I get pain, I get athletics and I now get Pilates.

My goal now is to be that bridge between your body, its injuries and its movement perfection. I will work with you, and the other coaches in your world, to help your body be its best body. Through problem solving and movement analysis we will create movement patterns that work best for you. Together we will create space and strength within you so you can create the power you need to be successful.