Pilates at Community House

Whether it’s jogging, swimming, rollerblading or golfing that’s your choice of exercise, there is a class being held on the island right now that might help you get even more out of your workout. It’s called Pilates, and it’s being held down at the Crowninshield Community House on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings from 8 to 9 a.m. While many people have heard of the form of exercise, not many know just how fascinating the method and its creator really are.

Pilates were created by Joseph Pilates around 1912. As a child, he suffered from asthma, rickets and rheumatic fever, and was determined that he would become the fittest person he could be. His parents, a naturopath and a prize-winning gymnast, strongly encouraged their son, and by the age of 14 he was fit enough to pose for anatomy models.

Throughout his young life he worked as a fitness and self-defense trainer, a boxer, a circus performer and a physical therapist. It was during World War I that Pilates started doing serious therapy work with prisoners of war, utilizing their hospital beds as part of the program. McGill and Cooper still utilize a similar method when they give personal sessions on the “Reformer” machine, a Pilates contraption that looks quite similar to a hospital bed.

According to the class instructors, Heather Mcgill and Nancy Cooper, Pilates and “ball’ates” are specifically designed to teach the body six different principles - concentration, centering, control, breathing, precision and flow.

McGill said that these principles can help people get even more of a workout from their normal routine.

“So many people are doing different types of fitness,” she said. “When you learn Pilates, it’s not what you’re doing but how  you’re doing it. Don’t stop running or lifting weights, just do it in a different way, in the principles that we teach you, coming from that place of center and control. You have to take those adaptations and apply them to yourself … it’s very concentrated. Your mind needs to be there as well as your body. Once you practice for a while, you will leave with a greater energy. I realized after I was practicing I noticed a difference in my focus, a concentration improvement, and more energy that stayed with me through the day.”

McGill is a prime example of how even someone who is already fit can benefit greatly from learning Pilates. She was in the military and has been a fitness instructor for 18 years, but when she suffered an injury in a car accident eight years ago she found that she needed a way to stay in shape without further complicating that injury.

“I started doing yoga but I wasn’t getting the strengthening I wanted,” she said. “I found Pilates through a physical therapist, then found a book and started to learn. Back then, there was nowhere to take classes, and it wasn’t until 1994 or 1995 that I started to find more information. I have always been fitness-oriented, and I’m always trying to find things that are balanced.”

Cooper, who is also the director of the Johann Fust Community Library, has been teaching yoga for 18 years.

She found herself in the position of being too flexible, and becoming injured from her preferred form of aggressive yoga.

“I was very flexible, but I was over-stretching myself,” she said. “I wasn’t coming from a place of true stability. The beginning of my interest in Pilates was when we were starting the Gasparilla Inn spa and we couldn’t find any qualified instructors. Heather and I were working together, and our approach to fitness was very similar. We were feeling and thinking the same things.”

Cooper said Pilates brought her to a new path of fitness and helped her obtain a better mind and body connection through the method’s concentration and focus.

“I continue to love yoga for the meditative quality of it, nothing can touch that experience,” she said. “But when you’re looking for just fitness, Pilates I found was better suited for myself and for people that I have met in this area.”

Classes started in November, with a normal attendance of anywhere between eight and 12. They will continue through the spring. The cost per class is $10.

Equipment needed for the class can be as minimal as a bottle of water and comfortable, snug-fitting clothes with no constriction to the waist. McGill recommends, though, that a yoga mat and exercise ball be obtained as well, particularly for the Friday ball’ates class.

“A yoga mat is recommended for sanitary reasons, and if you’re going to do the ball exercises we do have extras but we prefer each person bring their own,” she said. “We’re all over those things, and if someone plans to do this on a regular basis it just makes sense to have your own.”

McGill and Cooper concurred that while they don’t endorse any particular store to find the equipment, they are partial to the Danskin-brand 55 centimeter balls.

Cooper said that Pilates can be a life-changing form of exercise that can also help you follow through with a more balanced life.

“Change happens through movement, and movement heals,” she said. “You can take that as a metaphor in every aspect of your life. Using the ball helps to provide a very tactile, visual source of stability. You can be doing the same exercise on the mat and putting that ball under your legs, or between your arms for support. It gives everyone a focus, a tactile visual that helps to maintain the basic principles of stability. When I look around the room and I see someone on the ball and it’s wiggling, I know that person is not coming from a true place of stability.”

McGill said that they have people ages 9 to 83 that currently attend the class.

“She can do a backbend,” she said, referring to the 83-year-old. “Age doesn’t matter.”

For more information on the classes, contact Heather McGill at 270-2595.