Will pilates be difficult?
Learning Pilates will seem difficult and challenging in the beginning. Both mentally and physically. You will be doing exercises that you haven’t done before and moving in a way that you haven’t moved before.
Think of it like learning a new skill. Learning a new skill or movement pattern is always hard but it all depends on how much you want it and how determined you are to stick with it. You just have to get past that early frustration stage.
Reformer based pilates such as POGO’s fitness pilates will challenge you and delight you at the same time.
Let’s call it the frustration bubble. Imagine that you are trapped in a bubble and no matter how you try you can’t get out. You can see the way to get but for some reason just can’t achieve it. But then as you practise more and more you get closer to breaking free and then imagine the relief when it finally clicks and then you can work on further progressing and improving.
That’s what it will be like in the beginning but once you emerge from that frustration bubble you will be so glad you stuck with it and will really start to achieve fantastic results.
And don’t worry about this frustration feeling, it is natural and happens to everyone.I will be there to guide you , coach you, challenge and encourage you. It will take time and it’s about constant pursuit of perfection. You will feel so good you will prioritise it over other activities and miss it when you can’t get to a session.
As another analogy, think of a child learning to walk. When they fall they just get back up and don’t even think about it. They don’t beat themselves up about it and give up as we tend to do as adults.
Can you remember what it was like learning to walk or riding a bike? Was it difficult? You can’t really remember can you but you did it. That’s the mentality you must apply to Pilates.
We all know the saying ‘Practice makes perfect’ but more importantly it should be ‘Perfect practice makes perfect.’ That is to say that we can practise all we like but if we are not practising the correct way we aren’t doing ourselves any good.
When we think of the phrase ‘Practice makes perfect’ we mainly think of a skill or hobby etc but why do we only apply it to these things? e.g playing an instrument, a sport, golf, whatever if you don’t practice something you don’t get better or you regress. Why do we not apply the same mentality to our bodies? We move every day but don’t practice correct movement. That’s what pilates is, practising how to move properly.
Pilates Pete
POGO Pilates Instructor
