Peta Todd talks going to reformer Pilates and exercising for some well deserved ‘me time’
Finally getting back into your favourite exercise can be difficult but it gives you time to forget about responsibilities and stress for the duration of your workout
GOOD intentions are a start but life can get in the way. And cake. That can get in the way, too. I’m talking about exercise.
It’s a vicious cycle. Once you are out of the habit, it seems unachievable. Going back to gym classes is like the first day of school and I feel like that awkward, gangly girl with feet too big for her body.
I’ve been putting it off. I loved sport growing up, before work and babies came along.
It wasn’t until my third child, Frey, was a year old that I started to crave regular exercise.
I looked for an exercise class because if I had booked and paid for it, I was more likely to go.
I stumbled across reformer pilates and had heard some good stuff about it.
It is designed to strengthen your core, improving your posture and your flexibility by holding a number of exercises on a piece of apparatus.
I think I was expecting some kind of retreat like in a rom-com, with hushed voices and the sound of wind chimes. I was wrong. If you have never seen a “reformer machine” before, it looks like a medieval torture device. And to be honest, it pretty much is.
I quietly bumbled my way through my first class watching those around me, realising the only muscles I now owned were my brain and my right bicep from carrying toddlers on my hip.
But I liked how the exercise made me feel.
At that time in my life, things were pretty intense.
We were just starting along the path of treatment for Frey’s communication delay and it felt heavy on my shoulders.
I never switched off.
But when I had written down in my diary that I had blocked out one hour for a class, that was my time. My headspace.
Even the drive on my own meant I could turn up the car radio. I would sweat and stretch, forgetting my responsibilities and worries for 60 minutes.
I carried on with the class well into my pregnancy with Casper and found it helped my back and hips as I got rounder.
I was counting down the days to being able to get back to training, but those first-day nerves have been creeping in.
I knew I was going to feel sore and out of practice. But I needed my headspace back just as much as my abs.
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So last week, I returned – and immediately I felt my balance had been restored.
I wasn’t worried about “bendy Wendy” to my left or that my leggings were slightly more snug than they used to be.
Just that I was doing something just for me.