If you’re ever in one of Mandy’s classes with me, you might hear me complain to her. A lot. “What did my inner thighs ever do to you?” Mandy and I have the kind of relationship where I can do those things and we can both laugh about it. But in reality, she knows I need her to push me. We all need that extra push from a trusted trainer now and again.
I recently bought a used Pilates chair. It’s not nearly as nice as the ones at the studio, but it has all the key components and gets the job done…if I use it. I did at first, then was out of town, and out of practice, and now it sits, sad and alone. There are a million chair exercise routines on YouTube, I could easily find one and do it! I’ve done a couple, but that online person I don’t know urging me to do a couple more sets or to try something that’s new or difficult is not the same as the PIH teachers I know and love.
There’s a level of trust and intimacy there. They know my body: both my limits and where it needs to be pushed. I told Terree the other day that whenever a teacher tells us to put all the springs on the Reformer I cringe and pray it’s not for anything with our feet in the end strap. She laughed and said she’d need to add that into my next workout. All the PIH instructors teach to the whole body and include not just our favorites that feel comfortable, but also the ones that NEED our attention (even if we want to ignore them!).
Mandy thinks of it as a team sport. We all have areas where our bodies excel, and areas where they don’t. Our brain, the coach, wants to put us in the roles where we shine, but the reality is, we need all the parts to have at least baseline functionality. We need a coach who pushes us to be well-rounded, and that’s where PIH teachers come in. The teachers see our strengths and weaknesses and MAKE us play the whole field.
And, let’s face it, doing a workout at home is not nearly as fun as coming to the studio and catching up with our friends. 🙂
