Monday, August 10, 2009

Pilates With My Eyes Closed

This morning I met Nicole and Laura for our regular Monday morning pilates session. I'll be gone out of town on vacation with my family for the next two Mondays, so this was my last chance for a while to get in some really good core work.

Nicole had us start out on the mat and do a couple of warm-up breathing exercises. Then we got on the foam roller. She said she wasn't sure how it would go at 7:00 AM to do that first thing, but that we'd just try it out. I know I said this last week, but there is one that I just love with the foam roller, which is really more of a stretch. You put your hands into prayer position and then move them up over your head. Then you open your arms and let them fall down and around before coming back up into prayer position. Something about the fact that you are lying on that round tube just makes my chest and shoulders really get a good stretch and it really opens up your chest area (an area I tend to hunch over most of the day at my computer). I really would consider buying a foam roller myself just to do that stretch more often.

After doing some other foam roller exercises and then some exercises without the roller, including roll-ups and rolling like a ball (neither of which are my favorites), we moved over to the reformer. The sun rises right into one of the windows of the studio and right onto the reformer that I was using. During the first several exercises, I had to keep my eyes closed most of the time. Next time I'll try to remember to bring my sunglasses! It's actually a little bit surprising to me that the studio doesn't have a window shade that could be used to prevent this. I'm certainly not the first person to have noticed this. Of course, it's just one reformer that gets the sunlight, so maybe that one gets used less than the others.

When Nicole announced that we would be setting up to do the stomach massage set of exercises, I was just thinking that my stomach did not really want a massage today. I'm not sure why, but I just think all three of the stomach massage exercises are a little awkward. Probably because they are. Either way, my stomach did get a massage and now it's quite tired!

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