Online Pilates Classes
To Zoom, or not to Zoom?!
If there is one thing this pandemic has shown us, is that technology has provided a fantastic platform to help keep us connected when we can’t physically be with each other. At a personal level, being based in Melbourne and having our families based in Western Australia and New Zealand has meant that although we haven’t been able to physically see our families, we’ve still been able to share the highs and lows of the COVID-19 pandemic, and enjoy casting shared thoughts in to an unpredictable future. Is it ideal? Far from it. Is it okay as a temporary measure? It’s certainly better than nothing - faster than a letter in the mail, and a bit more lively than a phone call.
Online classes
And that’s also how we feel about it for Movementality. Being able to transition the majority of our business services online has provided a fantastic opportunity to keep our clients moving, and our staff in work while waiting to be allowed back in the studio. We’ve had excellent feedback from our clients about how the classes have been surprisingly helpful at maintaining flexibility and strength, and also the challenge of using their own body weight for the majority of the work has caught a number of people off guard. For a number of clients, this has meant they have found they actually even prefer the online Pilates sessions, for reasons ranging from the freeing up of time constraints, through to not having to leave their house, or the delivery style actually suits them better than being in the shared studio space.
It has also provided an opportunity to interact with those outside of their normal living areas, that they used to see regularly in the studio. Movementality has tried to continue to connect our clients together and facilitate our community where we can, with things like the Movementality Morning Tea that had 20 or so people join, all wearing funny hats, and sharing their experiences of the last few months. Those who joined in had a great time, and it was so nice to see a few faces we’d normally not see on our teaching roster.
For other clients though, the online training sessions just simply don’t work. Being able to leave the house offers appeal for many reasons, as does having the support of the equipment to help facilitate strength and challenge flexibility in areas of our body that have proven to be hard to reach without assistance. And if they can’t get that extra support, then it’s just not worth their time - and we completely understand! We didn’t sign up the run the space off a laptop either, and reflect on the joys of being in the studio back and running as close to normal as we’ll ever be able to get - that’s right, the old days are gone sorry folks..!
Movementality Free TV
And the freedom of the internet has allowed there to now be huge volumes of exercise regimes available on demand, many of them for free. A lot of them are quite okay, as we have used this sort of thing in the past for inspiration ourselves. Are they doing what we do at Movementality? No. We still pride ourselves on keeping an eye on you and making your technique suitable for your level and goals, and for that we need to ensure we continue to charge a fair price for our skills. But if you need something basic to help keep you ticking along until the studio re opens, then let us know and we can always point you in the direction of some great, free content to work with such as the Movementality Free TV resources.
What else can you be doing to help keep you sane during the lockdown? Get back in to nature - I know it’s not the most appealing thing to do during winter, but the sun and being around trees, bush and beaches will do wonders for your mental health. Avoid spending lots of time on devices or watching TV - it’s really easy to spend hours on end engrossed on social media or live-streaming TV but again, it doesn’t bode well for your mental health. Put a limit on it, and go for a walk or read a book, do a jigsaw, get in the garden… lots of options! And don’t spend all day sitting down in comfortable chairs - get up and down off the floor, take the stairs, walk up a hill - just keep your body moving and get your heart rate up occasionally.
Should I be doing online classes?
If you are used to having regular directions and information when doing Pilates sessions, then it’s an overwhelming YES! Even if you are feeling like you’re in good shape, having someone keeping as eye on you and provide real time feed back will ensure that you stay focused, motivated and accountable. It also means you’ll have someone you can ask questions of, and even set up some exercises you can be doing in between sessions to ensure you’re staying mobile and strong long after the session.
What does an online class look like?
Actually not that dissimilar to what we used to do in the studio. For semi-privates, they are still capped at a maximum of three people plus the instructor, and we expect that you’ll start warming up while we work our way around the group and put together an individualised plan for each participant. Then we set you up, make sure you’re doing it correctly and know your potential progressions, then move to the next person. We then come back to you, get some feedback, and move to the next exercise.
For group classes, again you’d have some warm up exercises up your sleeve to start with while we catch up with the group, and then once we know how everyone is going we can start to work through the class that will tick off as many of the requests as we can, while recommending modifications and providing realtime feedback to those who need an extra assistance. It’s a lot different to what most companies offer which is an instructor doing a class over the camera, but not necessarily paying attention to you.
What does the future hold?
Who knows… We’ve got a lot of demand to maintain online sessions, so for now we’ll continue to offer online sessions for clinical semi-private sessions, privates, and group classes, as well as the odd workshop to help keep our fantastic community engaged and feeling awesome long after the lockdown ceases. If you want to learn more, head across to our online page, or shoot us an email to see what we can do for you. We still want to be back in the studio and still consider ourselves a bricks and mortar business, and will continue to do so until it’s no longer possible!