Jan 8 - Clinical Pilates Begins

  Today was my first clinical pilates class.  It's a lovely small class too, just three of us!  Rush said three or four is actually about the maximum which makes sense because it is a very compact gym.  We started on floor mats doing fifteen minutes of various warm up stretches and holds.  The hardest one was lifting my whole body up on my arms and feet, sort of like the top of a push up except you have to hold it for thirty seconds!  My whole body shook and in the end I had to settle from doing it from the knees only.
  After warm up we got into our various routines.  Each of us is dealing with strengthening different muscle groups so it was interesting to see how the other two used the same equipment differently.  The first machine I went on was the Clinical Reformer.  I'm not sure of the exact name of the exercise I do on it but it's kind of like an assisted lunge with added resistance.  See for yourselves...

  For all of my exercises I have to do three sets of ten, so for that one on the Clinical reformer I do three sets of ten on each leg.  On then to the Trapeze, for leg pushes and back arches.  The Trapeze isn't as tricky as it sounds, it doesn't have sliding bits like the Reformer but tends towards spring loaded bars and pulls.  If you need more resistance they just add more springs.
  After the three exercises on the machines I move to more manual exercises.  My favourite is the hyperextensions I do with the aid of an inflatable gym ball.  For that one I kneel on the floor with the ball in front of me, roll myself over it until my weight is on my arms and my pelvis, then I lift both legs up as straight and high as I can.

That ball has a weight limit of a whopping 350kg!

  From that I move on to giant round rubber bands.  The blue rubber band is a bit like one of those old chest expander things but I don't use it like that.  I hook it around something solid and it has hoops I can hold on to and then I sort of 'row' with it.  Again I do three sets of ten with that, but I do one set with both feet on the floor and then one set on each leg alone.  The red rubber band is smaller and I step into it and pull it up to my knees and then do squats, pushing the knees as far apart as I can.
  The final exercise is deceptively hard.  There is a medium-high density foam rubber mat on which I have to balance on one leg for thirty seconds to a minute at a time.  The problem is, if you watch the clock the movement of the second hand throws you off balance, but if you look at something completely stationary you can't tell how much time has elapsed.  Either way, the mat is designed to make it hard to balance.  The exercise is in all the tiny adjustments you have to do.  As I get better at just balancing, I will graduate to doing tiny knee bends on one leg during the balancing.
  It was a good workout.  I was sweating and I could feel the muscles working.  The red rubber band I think is the hardest.  I don't feel sore right now and I'm hoping it stays that way because I kept activity up for a while after the class.  I very much enjoyed my first clinical pilates class and I'm already looking forward to next week's session.  Thank you to Rush for taking photos of me doing the some of the exercises tonight.

  Today's food and exercise were:

• Breakfast was a 160g Gippsland Dairy Twist Mango & Blood Orange Yoghurt, a 35g Carmen's Yoghurt, Apricot & Almond muesli bar and an apricot.
• Lunch was the other half of yesterday's batard served with three green olives stuffed with feta, eight slices of Lebanese cucumber and a sliced yellow-flesh nectarine!
• Afternoon snack was a Pink Lady apple sliced and cored and an apricot.
• Exercise was a 45 minute clinical pilates class.
• Dinner was goat curry with basmati rice.

  Straight after pilates I went grocery shopping to grab things for tomorrow night's dinner.  I decided to do another smoked salmon quiche as I wanted to experiment with increasing the quantity of filling.  I'm glad I didn't try to do a double-quantity as one and a half times seems to be pretty right.   I have a fresh salad full of green things planned to go with it.
  I browsed Amazon tonight and I must admit, I'm getting tempted to start actually paying for some books for my kindle.  The free selection is great but it does seems to be vastly overpopulated with self-help, vampires, murder mysterys and romance or erotica.  I'm thinking I should make it a point to have my ten very favourite books on my kindle so that I always have them with me.  I'd best go to bed and read the books I already have before buying any more though.
  Jess