Pilates Class

Before lockdown, I was already aging out of the workout classes I liked most. Which surprised me as I was also getting priced out of most of them. How were these newly working teenagers affording this? I can think of nothing sadder than a twenty-two-year-old spending almost $30 to spin for 50 minutes on a Saturday morning but here I was doing the same, silently making fun of them. Why weren’t they at home, nursing a hangover like the rest of their friends? Normally, this niche workout market would fly over my head.

In a pandemic that has made me question everything about my body when I might not otherwise, I have looked for workouts that don’t make me hate myself and working out. They’re rare, but I manage to discover a workout I like once or twice a year. The trick is to find a class that is so distractingly fun that I forget that I’m putting my body through it. I always used to get sick and now that I spend the majority of my time indoors, avoiding public transit at all costs, I feel a pressure to strengthen my immunity to common colds and anything that renders me weaker. What am I going to do with this time and how will I emerge at the end of it?

I first started this class with doubts. But my sister wanted to capitalize on a second two weeks free introductory package and needed my credit card and email to do it. Once I signed up, I sent her the password and carried on with my life. She didn’t prompt me to try it but mentioned in passing who her favourite instructor was. I forgot this information immediately. 

The first class I did was with a thin blonde woman, a human salt lamp. She was full of advice about your energy and forgiveness and how you can’t move on until you course correct. Alright….. It felt strange but the workout itself stayed with me for hours. She spent a large majority of the middle parts just dancing on her mat, the part that my sister affectionately refers to as the rave party. You throw your body around with no regard to how you look. You’re meant to chase the feeling of freedom and this feeling came so quickly the first time I had to stop dancing to catch my breath. How had I not tried this before? It combined everything I love about working out with none of the tedious, boring stuff that I wish would be missed in each class I pay for. There’s very little pain involved with the class but it does require your full attention, something that has plagued me since I got my first iPhone in 2013.  

The class begins by planting your feet hip’s width distance apart with one hand on your heart, one on your stomach. You close your eyes and breathe in and out deeply. It’s a grounding pose that signals to your body that it’s time to work out and that you’re safe where you are. All distractions are meant to be put aside for the hour-long classes. They also have restorative and express options that are 45 minutes.

Although I tried to make it social, it’s a quiet, solitary practice. No one knows I’m doing it when I’m doing it, except maybe the sweet lady who lives below me who can hear my jumping jacks. The instructors sometimes mention the hundreds of people online who are also watching the class and how we should all be tapping into this collective energy. When I know my friends are doing a class while I am, I text them throughout. I try as hard as I can to make it as though I’m with people when I’m not. Despite this, the class forces me to participate alone. This is probably better for me.

The next few classes were like the first. I began to notice a pattern to the schedule. I developed a sense of loyalty to instructors that I enjoyed. I avoided ones that I hadn’t tried yet. This, it turns out, was very normal for my friends. After the initial two-week intro deal, I signed up and started paying for it monthly. I sent my friends my login information and most of them ignored my gentle pushes to try at least one class with my favourite instructor, the same as my sister. One of my friends in Australia couldn’t get the right timing down because the live classes’ schedule was opposite to hers. The website has on demand ones, though, and she also found her favourite instructors. My latest buddy to start tried a woman I had largely avoided for no real reason. Then, I started doing her classes with my friend and we would text back and forth between and during exercises lamenting how hard it was. This instructor had seen some shit. She is now another favourite.

After the grounding pose, you typically begin by squatting to an up-tempo song. The second part of the class transitions between the squats to a leg exercise on the floor. Like a lift or something where you’re kneeling and in repose then you lift your leg back and bounce it. Or push it up towards the side of the mat then down again. You do this repeatedly on one side then sometimes, if you’re lucky, it’s still the middle of the song and you get to switch legs. Other times, when you have a long bit of class left, the instructor just repeats the exact same song but on the opposite leg. This always happens later in the class with a few songs between the repeated one. They say it’s an act of balance to finish off the other side. Your body didn’t forget and neither should you. 

I used to believe that if I enjoyed something, it meant that it was good. I have since learned that this is truly insane thinking. I am, however, certain that this class is as close to perfect as an online workout class can be. Falling in love with this class felt like how you fall in love for the first time. A casual interest at the start where you see each other every few days. Then, after what feels like an overnight, you’re taking daily naps together and planning on where you will settle down. I started doing the class daily.

The constant workouts have predictably changed my body. My biceps are defined where they weren’t before and my back is inexplicably more toned than anything else. My knees have thinned and I’ve developed one of those lines that run through my calves. I still struggle with lifting heavy objects but less than I did before. I have an overarching sense of feeling fit and healthy that I haven’t had since I used to have classes at a boxing gym. My energy levels have increased and I’m hungrier than usual. I can eat more than I used to.

When I injured my foot this summer and stopped working out regularly, I noticed the difference right away. It bothered me that I was spending the majority of my time elevating my ankle instead of doing my practice. I ate way less and stopped wanting to go for walks after work. The effects of not doing the class on my mental health were immediately obvious.

I felt more antisocial and less motivated to do anything. The hopelessness of the pandemic and life in general crept up on me and I didn’t have my little workout to look forward to. My body changed again where all my focus went to healing myself rather than becoming stronger like I was just getting accustomed to. I was in a shittier mood and had a shorter temper. I don’t think it all necessarily relays back to missing out on this boutique Pilates class. Some of it was my own doing and commitment to having a bad attitude. I could have avoided the injury and I blamed myself for my carelessness. But the class made me feel less hard on myself and discourages negative self-talk.

In the full-length classes, there are sometimes two sets of burpees. The recurrence represents an opening and closing, a reminder to our bodies that we can do hard things and not be overwhelmed or weathered by them. The first burpee set sucks and by the time the second set comes around, you’re prepared both mentally and physically and do a much better job. Discovering your improvements by the end of the hour is rewarding. Like anything that you get better at over time, noticing the subtle progress makes it easier to keep trying.  

Typically, I hate the burpees. I do the modified version so as not to disturb my bum ankle. But I recognize their value regardless and copy the instructors, throwing in the full version every couple of rounds. The modifications are meant to be inclusive of most exercising levels. They mention pregnancy, injuries and just general discomfort with the movement as reasons to adjust to the earlier settings. They name them as versions 1, 2, and 3, in descending order of engagement. The version 1s involve keeping your feet planted and less of an impact from jumping around. The distinctions aren’t important, though, which I am regularly reminded of by the instructors.

The instructors are all women; the vast majority are small and white. A couple of them have been pregnant which thrills me to see and follow along. There are three compact, short brunettes who have the most charismatic and engaging energies and I confuse them often. I take almost everyone’s classes and enjoy them all. Some of them bring up books they like, some allude to the politics that are happening in the US and how crazy it all is but they insist that their classes are places of respite and are for you.

The prompts during exercises remind me of the prompts from the spinning instructors I’ve had but with less of a sense of urgency and forcefulness. Their words run the gamut from gentle suggestions to caring about yourself and forgiving yourself and others to accepting responsibility for your own happiness. Because no one will do this for you. I’m always laughing or smiling at their open conversations to the camera, a woman alone in a candle-lit studio, jumping around her mat or flexing her shoulders in a cat/cow position insisting on her self-worth. Forgiving themselves for their intrusive, unhelpful thoughts. Seeming to discover their humanity in the fifty minutes we have been moving together. It feels like a revelation watching them, like I’m being let in on multiple secrets. More than once, an instructor has whispered, “I am enough” emphatically into their Britney Spears microphones. I laugh then earnestly repeat it to myself. Sometimes they ask you to yell your own name. Once one of my favourite instructors mentioned that she had been feeling a bit negative about herself that week. She spoke clearly and definitively when she declared proudly: “Not everybody hates you. You aren’t useless.” It felt way more intimate than I expected it to.  

The class ends with the heart clearing. Sometimes they call it heart opening. The goal is to wrap up the class, shake off any residual feelings of stress and effectively move on with your day. It’s my favourite. You know it’s starting because the instructor advises you to bend at the knees and double yourself over your legs. You rest for a second in this position, maybe by extending the knees a few times but you end up kneeling with your butt sitting tenderly on the soles of your feet. The instructor tells you to open your arms wide as if you’re about to give someone a hug. I lift my head as high as it can go and feel the effects of the last fifty minutes. Then the music starts playing. The move looks so goofy. The best way to describe it is arm flapping, like a bird. Like you’re trying to take off with the momentum of your pendulous arm swinging.

When attempting to convince a colleague to try it, I insisted that she wait until my favourite instructor’s next class a few days away. She loved her like I did. We became obsessive about this instructor, following her on Instagram and sharing her posts despite having already seen them on our own accounts. At one point, the instructor stopped having classes on her regularly scheduled days. I inquired to my friend about what might have happened. She didn’t know. Then, the instructor stopped having classes altogether. There was no announcement and we didn’t realize that she was moving and was using the time off to quarantine. Eventually, she posted to her Instagram that she would be returning to the studio to teach the class again. It was in a story and my colleague forwarded it to me. I did that horrible thing where you respond to the person who created the story as opposed to the sender and wrote, “Oh thank god.” The instructor responded a few hours later with three heart emojis. Shocked, I forwarded the notification to my friend saying that I meant to respond to her directly but mistakenly messaged our hero. We were buzzing. After collecting myself, I read my messages and responded to the instructor directly this time, saying how much her classes meant to me and sending back my own hearts, clear and opened.