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Weekly wrap up. Week 14. 2025.

Spring Reconditioning.

Spring is here! The sun is out, the flowers are doing their best, the days are now longer and hopefully we are all feeling motivated and ready for doing a bit more!

How are you going to start your Spring?  How about some reconditioning?


I am no stranger to psychotherapy and I find this work absolutely fascinating . Of course it takes many forms and is a constantly growing and evolving science but I find it staggering how, in the right hands and with appropriate work (and it is hard work) we can learn to recondition our way of thinking, our emotional  responses and how we deal with triggers and challenges. We do not need to accept that "this is just how I am".... we can change how things affect us. There is a saying that I use a lot - "while we cannot control situations around us, we can control how they impact us".


I see this as so very closely related to our physical well being too. Those who are regulars in my classes know that I feel really strongly about how I want you to learn about your body. I am often asking you to "check in" or I ask you to work with your eyes closed to  feel the movement or if you feel resistance or pain, where is it coming from - can you see a wider picture and so on. I want you to better understand how you move, where your weaknesses are and what areas need attention or development. Just as with psychotherapy, this is no overnight fix and it takes a huge amount of work, attention and discipline but we can learn to recondition our bodies and Pilates is so very much about that.


When we practise Pilates, we do so for many reasons. I talk a lot about how you don't need to love Pilates but what you will gain will be a stronger, better balanced, more coordinated and responsive body to then enable you to enjoy better what you DO love, be it to run faster, cycle further, hit a ball harder and so on or just simply to go about your daily life with less aches and pains.


A body we love and a body we hate are made exactly the same way. A decision at a time.


When we do a standing move taking our arms to the ceiling for example, we consider how efficiently we are moving because if we cannot perform this move as it is, how can we safely lift heavy dumbbells to the ceiling without risking damage to our shoulders and spine?

If we cannot squat in a balanced and coordinated way then this can directly impact our running, cycling and so many other functions so this is the type of thing I talk about in our classes - it may seem slow and tedious sometimes but these are the foundations from where we build towards higher impact, power and range if those are our goals.

If you do not practise slow, controlled and coordinated movement, you may not even be aware of imbalance and weakness as other areas are making up the shortfall but as I am always nagging on, if something is compensating, it leads to imbalance which leads to injury.


While physios and osteos work their magic and put us back together, what we need to do is recondition our movement so that we move more effectively. It takes a huge amount of time, discipline and practise but it works.


12 months ago, I chose to make some changes to my exercise and lifestyle. I needed to lose weight, I wanted to get fitter and stronger as well as preserve a problem knee and hip and in order to do that, I was looking at a long term plan. I had to surrender to the reality that this was indeed a long term approach as to fully recondition my body, I had to make fundamental changes.


I hate being in the kitchen. I loathe it. I literally loathe it. This continues to be my weakness and a work  in progress.( I nearly typo'd wok in progress - how ironic).  If I can cut a corner or take a short cut around my nutrition, please DEAR GOD, I will.

I know that my discipline is far stronger in the gym -  or in my case, my spare room that is fully functioning with spin bike, weights rack and all my Pilates small equipment. I can drag myself in there on a weekday night or a Sunday morning and put myself through a full on session of weights or spinning that leaves me in bits but I will do anything to avoid "wasting" precious time standing in my kitchen preparing healthy food, so for me, this has been a massive challenge. I am still working on reconditioning my thinking in this area but physically, I am winning.


I am 57 next week and I am slimmer than I have been in a decade and stronger than I think I have ever been. I have just bought some heavier dumbbells (hilarious watching the delivery driver get THOSE out of the van) and am keeping up on my "board of accountability " by writing up every workout.

It is an ongoing project but my attitude is much more about (my own) training being part of my weekly life like the weekly shop, cleaning the house, keeping on top of the bookwork etc, rather than having to train for something specific.


How are you going to attack April? Can you make some lifestyle choices that you have been putting off? Can you squeeze in a couple of extra workouts just because? Reconditioning is slow and steady and takes time and discipline so baby steps but keep taking them.


Just keep turning up....get on that mat, lace up those trainers... it may not be your hardest session or your fastest time but turn up and do something to keep the show on the road and stay consistent - that is how we can recondition our approach. There is the discipline right there - ignore that naggy voice saying you are too tired or too busy... just get on your mat at the time you had set aside and do what you can do. It is a powerful message to your whole system. Keep the consistency - drop one session and before you know it, it's become a week which slides into a month.. and then you have to start all over again. How many starting from the beginnings do you want?


As for my food prep however... still an uphill challenge. I read the books, I listen to the podcasts and I buy the ingredients and I am getting better at batch prepping... so dull cooking for 1... I continue to work at this and have a lot more work on my reconditioning to change my thinking but I will not give up and isn't it a good job then that we have an excellent nutritionist for our upcoming talk!


Tuesday April 15th. 7pm.

 

Please settle on your sofa and join me online as I host the amazing clinical nutritoinist Yvonne Bishop Weston. 


Yvonne has supported people to effect lasting change through clinical consultations, cookery books, written press and TV appeareances. 


We are incredibly lucky to be able to benefit from her knowledge and expertise so please head to "Teatime talks" for more info and put the date in your diary. Everyone welcome. 

Our last jolly

We had a fantastic day out on Wednesday on the Isle of Wight. We are SO much more than Pilates and we all love our get togethers. Sadly a couple of you had to drop out at the last moment but we were a brilliant group taken very bestest care of by our Island online member Sarah (who was taking this photo).

We walked, had coffee and goodies, a delicious lunch, more walking and a mooch around Yarmouth before our ferry home although 2 stayed on to watch the sunset and have fish and chips tea and catch a later ferry. We were blessed with beautiful weather and it was a super day - to be repeated.

There is a lot going into the libary lately. 


Monday's all levels Magic circle class is well worth revisiting. 


OnTuesday in our All levels 9am class we did a full body strength class using just a resistance band - OMG that was a tough one. Do have a look whatever your level as this is a super one to keep you ticking over when you are away from home as bands are so easy to carry about. 


Thursday's 8am mixed ability small equipment circuits class is also in the library. 

A full body workout using roller, soft ball, fit band, pole, small weights and where I had a side lying fail! 


Why not dip into the strenght collection and try the November challenge (available on Tuesdays all levels and Fridays int/adv) or the more recent collection of Push, lower body and Pull - try to do all 3 in one week? 



It was wonderful to have such a good turnout at Beaulieu village hall last Saturday for the last of our 5 years online birthday celebrations. Right back to where it started! We had a lovely class and walked up the road for coffees and pastries and I was delighted to see so many of you. Thank you for your support.


Have a lovely weekend and see you soon. Jx

By juliet March 30, 2025
It's a busy one... but then, when isn't it?
By juliet March 21, 2025
Quick weekly touching base!
By juliet March 13, 2025
Juliet's Pilates was live. 17 March 2020
By juliet March 6, 2025
It's a busy one... but then, when isn't it?
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.
By juliet February 20, 2025
Ok, full disclosure. I think it was me that dropped the clanger yesterday morning... those of you who joined me would have seen that I was not at home, and when I arrived at my destination the night before, I realised I didn't have a magic circle with me and went into the 8am class and edited it to avoid the little hiccough and I THINK I may not have saved the changes. I may be wrong as I am in and out of the library ever such a lot but I am going to put my hand up and say it was me. I could probably wing it and get away with it but I have never been very good at lying and dishonesty does not sit well with me. Mind you, I say that..... I remember many moons ago... many, many moons ago when I was 15. My parents had a bar at the side of the lounge - terribly "all the rage" at the time, then terribly naff and I believe, quite the rage again now. Anyway, I was home on my own, I was bored and I started looking for mischief. I took the carefully hidden key ( hidden above the door as we all knew very well) and let myself into the little bar. I worked my way through the optics of many, almost certainly past their sell by date bottles of revolting sticky liquid and tried each and every one. Needless to say it was not long before I thought I was going to die. I staggered out of the back door to find somewhere to hide (and possibly die) and spied my sister's Hillman Minx which I crawled into and gratefully slept. When I woke, the effects were swift and I just managed to wind down the rear window and get my head out before events overtook me. As I was walking slowly back up the garden, my mother and sister arrived home and my sister was horrified at the state of her car. I still, to this day do not know how I did it but without missing a beat, I just informed her that there had been a load of seagulls flying overhead and they must have poo'd down the car door. Im still laughing now, some 42 years later, at how I just came out with that line and that, as I was staggering up the stairs "with the start of a bad cold", I heard my mother and my sister discussing how shocking it was that the seagulls had done that.... dear reader, we lived in Enfield, North London. There is not a coast for a hundred miles. My mother told us stories about when we were little and I recall the story of how my sister furiously denied writing all over the new wallpaper in her bedroom with a crayon. It was the fact that she would not back down and insisted it could not be her that saw her sent to bed. "But how did you know it was me?" she sobbed and my mother told us that the writing was, quite literally on the wall - all around her bedroom in wonky letters read "Louise 4" Yet, as the saying goes, there is none so easy to delude as oneself. I can say for fact that I have on many occasions talked myself into or out of situations, telling myself I could justify that cake because I deserved it, I could have that drink because I had earned it, I could slack off work because I had earned the right to... How many times have you gone to do something and then given yourself permission not to because of the story you came up with? I guess that can go too far and I know more than one or two who have lied for so long that they started to believe their own warped narrative. One such was my ex husband who lied to me about his age... when he asked me once to get his passport from his laptop bag, I flipped to the photo page to see how bad his picture might be, only to be confronted with a date of birth quite different from the one he had told me.. and he admitted that he had been telling me for so long that he had actually convinced himself he was indeed 8 years younger... Mind you, I still married him so who's the fool!! We all tell white lies and we don't want to cause unnecessary discomfort - if someone has just spent a fortune on a new outfit and they are thrilled, would we honestly tell them we didn't like it? ..... on that note though.... when we were teenagers, a friend of mine's mum and her neighbour went down their road to the church to watch the arrival of a bride for her wedding. Maybe it was because they hadn't been invited and were a bit miffed but they were less than complimentary and I can honestly remember this to the word and I am laughing as I write this ..."Crikey, the bride has clapped some weight on, hasn't she? I thought brides were meant to lose weight in the run up - do you think she has already eaten all the wedding cake? I would definitely wear sleeves with those arms" ... "And WHAT is Sheila wearing on HER HEAD? Call that a hat? ".... all this said unfortunately, very close to the videographer, back in the days of wedding videos being very new and with none of today's editing available. Every word was captured and saved.... on their ACTUAL wedding video... I kid you not... Learning to be brutally honest with ourselves is one of life's greatest lessons. One of my favourite books is Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes. Marian is an addict in recovery and weaves addiction of many forms into all her novels (also brilliant - Again Rachel and Grown Up's) and she talks with such candour on the subject of addiction - I have heard her interviewed many times and it is the power to delude ourselves that is so shocking. The lies we can tell ourselves when all around us can see through it. Another great speaker on the subject is the mighty Edith Eger, who I have mentioned before. A holocaust survivor, she continues to lecture as a psychotherapist in her 90's - her books The Choice and The Gift are absolute must reads. She talks about healing without distraction - whether that is alcohol, drugs, food, shopping, exercise, scrolling social media... it takes so many forms but it is only when we remove the many distractions that we can start to sit with ourselves, get to truly know ourselves and then, and only then may we move forward. We know the need to be present, to be still, to be quiet but sometimes it helps to hear it delivered in a different voice or explained around another approach for us to see how it may benefit us. Anyway - my name is Juliet Nicholas. I am 56 and when I was 15, I vomited down the outside of my sister's car. There are no seagulls in Enfield.
By juliet February 13, 2025
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