SECTION: Pilates Taster Short Course: Your 7 a Day Slice of Goodness

1. Taster: Introduction

Hello and welcome to Pilates, your seven a day slice of goodness. I'm Josie and I've been in the health and
fitness business now for over 30 years. But the most important transformational discipline that I've ever
learned is Pilates. It took me a long time to get into it. I come from very much a fast moving. I used to be an
aerobics teacher and it took me a long time to sort of calm down and slow it down and get used to to working
without music and much more of a mind body kind of form of exercise. But once I did, once I started to realize
the benefits, I've never looked back. It's helped improve my posture. It's helped alleviate back problems, and
it's helped me with everything else. My body awareness technique. From a teaching point of view, it's been
absolutely invaluable. And I have been so happy to help all my clients over the years with such problems as
back issues, back pain, stress, incontinence. I've helped a lot of ladies recover Postnatally It's a stress reliever
because you're having to focus so much. So it's definitely that that mind body thing going on there, relieving
stress, good night's sleep. So clients who haven't been able to sleep rehabilitation following injury, but it also
is excellent for preventing injury, so it very much works from the inside out. But it's not all about the core.
Now I've chosen these seven exercises because I wanted to give you a fair representation of what Pilates has
to offer. So it is a full body workout. It works from the inside out. You will see how much stronger you feel
after a few weeks of doing this, this short program. And it's a very internal strength. It's not about being able
to lift heavy weights or, you know, go for a ten K run. This is just it's very hard to explain, but you feel so much
stronger internally. We work on flexibility. We work on mobility. And these seven exercises are very
representational of this. You may already have tried a Pilates course and by week four you're still lying on your
back trying to find neutral and trying to learn the breathing. So I'm going to give you a very, very quick
introduction to all of that. It is a long learning curve, but again, the exercises that I've chosen for you, we will
be able to do them without spending too much time just learning the breathing and the neutral position. So
the way in which I've set this short course up is we're going to look at each exercise individually. So the first
seven lessons are looking at each of the exercises and looking at their modifications, because that's going to be
important for you to find your level. So you might be quite strong, and you might be able to do one of the
exercises very well, but you may not have flexibility and mobility, flexibility, and mobility, and you may struggle
with one of the other exercises, for example. So you may not be complete your beginner or completely all
advanced. You need to find your level for each exercise. And once you've done that and once, you're familiar
with what we're doing, you can go on and put them all together for the workout. Now the workout is going to
be at advanced level, so I really hope that you enjoy this. If you have any questions or you're not sure about
anything, then please just send me a message. I'd love to hear from you. Okay, so let's dive in.