M. Suzanne Terry

It’s book club day, which means my time for activity will have to be wedged in between work and baking a cake and doing a load of laundry so I have pants tomorrow and, most importantly, discussing Wild* while drinking wine. I hope that it will happen between work and book club, but it might have to wait until after book club.  After wine. Right before bed.

Pilates to the rescue.

I’ve talked about strength training a couple of times now and have badgered you to engage your core and not hurt yourself. Pilates will help you do that by giving you a core to work with. This is great for dancers, runners, and weight lifters – everybody, really.  It can be done with or without weights. It’s fun to watch your pet or child try to do this with you. In fact, in some of the moves, you can use your pet or child as a weight, and they will think you are playing with them. Confession – I used the daycare kids as weights all the time.  They thought we were playing Rocking Horse.  Nope.  Rolling like a ball with a toddler. They loved it. So did their parents, because they were really easy to put to bed those nights.

My go-to routine for busy days is Mari Winsor’s 20-minute routine.* I like it because 1) it’s twenty minutes, 2) she is upbeat but not excessively so, and 3) it is super low impact, which is necessary for busy days, because high impact just means more ways for me to fall, and I am likely to fall when I’m tired. I mean, I’m likely to fall most of the time, but especially when I’m tired.

You don’t have to buy anything to do this, though. You can also check Pilates videos out from the public library (I’ll be sharing a few of those myself later this month) or look up videos online.  You can also look exercises up online and design your own routine.

My favorite exercise is The Seal. It’s hilarious.  It involves rolling back and tapping your heels together. You will feel dumb the first time you do it, but you’ll be laughing. If you laugh deeply enough, I’m pretty sure that’s an ab workout all on its own.

Have fun!

I’m committing to 31 Days of Movement.

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