Our semi-regular rundown of Pilates (and Pilates-related) news from around the Web. Enjoy!

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

• The state of Missouri is enforcing a four percent tax on yoga and Pilates classes, effective this month. Click here and here to read more about what’s at issue.
  
  
• BASI Pilates™ launched Pilates Interactive™, an online instructional tool for Pilates instructors and studio managers. 

• The Chicago Tribune reports that exercise balls in the classroom sharpen attention and improve posture. “You’d be surprised how many kids really need to move while learning,” said one fourth-grade teacher.

• Advice for movement teachers: How to handle when a client has a crush on you.

• Useful reflections from instructor Anne Samoilov, Five Lessons I Learned My First Year Teaching Pilates…and a shout out to Pilates-Pro.com. Thanks, Anne!

• More on the health benefits of stretching: In a study called “Poor trunk flexibility is associated with arterial stiffening” in the American Journal of Physiology, researchers linked the flexibility of arteries with how well people 40 and older did on a sit-and-reach-past-their-toes test.

• Sorry, but we couldn’t resist this one: The latest celeb to add to the who’s who of Pilates practitioners…David Beckham! Who knew we had Joe to thank for those gams?

A new record for the world’s largest Pilates class was confirmed last week, and it goes to…Spain! The official tally was 862 people, who came together for a May Pilates Day master class in Madrid, in conjunction with the Pilates Method Alliance.

Though Teaser reps had long been completed, the Spanish Pilates-for-health organization Fundación Pilates, which organized the event, finally earned official bragging rights last week, a near six-month wait. Guinness World Records awarded the class its stamp of approval on Oct. 21.

The record-breaker mat session ran for 40 minutes and was led by Mabel Cabrera, head of the teacher training program at Pilates Wellness & Energy® a Spanish Pilates studio chain. It was a part of a longer set of Pilates Day programming held in Madrid on May 9 that focused on bringing Pilates “to the street,” and spreading awareness of its health benefits. It seems that was successful—though 862 people participated in the mat class, more than 1,000 were on hand for the day’s events, which included demos, sessions for children, testimonials and some impressive choreography from the Wellness & Energy staff.

“It was very exciting to be at that Pilates Day event, knowing that they were going for a Guinness World Record,” said PMA executive director Elizabeth Anderson, who flew to Madrid to be on hand for the festivities. “The participation of the Madrileños was fantastic—whole families appeared ready for a really dynamic day, and they got one.”
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RELATED ARTICLES

World’s Largest Pilates Class
Pilates Day 2009

Widmer and clients in the Press-Gazette

Our semi-regular rundown of Pilates news from around the Web. Enjoy!

• On her 22nd attempt, Green Bay, Wisconsin’s Abby Widmer finally found the financing to open her own Pilates studio. “I almost felt like I’d hit a dead end, but I still tried to get my name out…then lucky number 22 pulled through for me,” she told the Green Bay Press-Gazette. She broke even for her first month on day two. Kudos to Abby!

• The Age, Melbourne, Australia’s daily newspaper, ran this excellent piece on Pilates and back pain—a great discussion of what can go wrong in unskilled hands. Here’s the subhead: “Building core strength has been hailed as a way to prevent back pain—but beware….”

• There’s just no cheating when it comes to breathing, Washington Post fitness writer Vicky Hallett reminds us. The Providence Journal is running her fantastic exploration of breath in exercise which details what happens when people tune in to their breathing. 

• Read about how one Danish study showed that exercise fights chemotherapy fatigue here, on Web MD.

• It’s official: women’s gyms are a fitness industry trend. Here’s a quick nationwide roundup.

• Teen Vogue caught up with re:Ab’s Brooke Siler, who dished advice.

• Paws-ilates: Yes, that’s Pilates with your dog. Now on video…it was only a matter of time! View the gory details here.

The latest Pilates news from around the Web. Enjoy!

“Surviving breast cancer comes down to the three Ps,” Fletcher client Catherine Kennedy (above) told the Malibu Times. “Preparation, prayer and Pilates. JoAnn changed my life.”

• Malibu Pilates instructor and breast cancer survivor JoAnn Fletcher donates 100 percent of proceeds from her Pilates for Pink classes, making her the top BCRF donor on the West Coast. Congratulations, JoAnn!

• Remember Vic Hart? He launched new Pilates equipment line Root Manufacturing—the first to utilize eco-friendly bamboo—in September, and was featured in his local Colorado paper, the Longmont Times Call.

• Here’s a nice overview of Pilates breath.

• Las Vegas is chock full of injured perfomers. Could Sin City be a Pilates goldmine?

• Naval combat veteran Jon Belanger, owner of Jonny Pilates, who teaches a regular Sunday-morning-in-the-park class, was featured in San Diego’s Uptown News. 

• Confirmed: Michelle Obama does Pilates. At 4:30 a.m. no less.

• The YMCA is getting in on the Pilates game: A Boston area YMCA is opening its own Pilates and Yoga studio. Is this a nationwide trend?

Ickes and her daughter at BurbankLeader.com

Our semi-regular roundup of Pilates news from around the Web.

• California’s Burbank Leader caught up with Dawn-Marie Ickes, who’s going international with her Pilates for children workshop. A physical therapist and PMA board member, Ickes initially launched a program to teach Pilates in area elementary schools. Resources grew thin but she didn’t get discouraged; she created the workshop.


• Former competitors the American Council on Exercise (ACE) and IDEA Health and Fitness Association announced a new, long-term partnership last month. They’ve kicked things off with some co-branded video-on-demand continuing education courses (CECs).

• re:AB’s Brook Siler ranted about uncomfortable airline seats in the Huffington Post and offered up easy stretches to combat stiffness.


• Scottsdale, Ariz., studio owner  Miranda Armenta, of MIRA Pilates challenged two people to a 60-day Pilates regimen. She wanted to see what came after Joe Pilates’ old adage, “In 10 sessions, you will feel the difference, in 20, you will see the difference, and in 30, you will be on your way to having a whole new body.” Click here to see the results.


• BOSU® tapped Erika Quest, owner of Studio Q in Laguna Beach, Calif., as its 2010 ‘Pilates Specialist.’  She’ll be developing content and exercises for a workshop and DVD.


• What better way to honor your city than with a Pilates calendar? New Orleans studio owner Alyce Morgan Wise teamed up with documentary photographer Alice “Dallas” McNamara to shoot ‘Spontaneous Zest and Pleasure: A Pilates Calendar,’ featuring shots of Pilates moves performed in some of NOLA’s most colorful and unexpected spots.

Here’s an idea for going green in your studio: choose Pilates equipment made from sustainable, eco-friendly materials. A new Pilates equipment brand, Root Manufacturing, has made that just a bit easier to do with its inaugural line, the first-ever made from bamboo.

“It’s a brand-new offering,” says Root founder and president Vic Hart. “There’s innovation going on, particularly with the bamboo, which offers not only sustainability, but also beauty, strength and hardness.”

Bamboo is technically a grass, not a wood, and Hart says it’s very hard yet lightweight, and stronger than actual wood because of the multiple laminations required to engineer it, thus making for durable and easier-to-move Pilates apparatus.

Root is the first Pilates apparatus line direct from Colorado’s Hart Wood Incorporated, which has been making equipment for the past 13 years for other Pilates brands. Hart says the company has prototyped and finessed many of the Root designs with ample feedback from the Pilates community over the years. Design highlights include locks instead of knobs for adjusting high Ladder Barrels, and multiple sizes and configurations for Reformers, including two standard widths, four standard lengths—combinable in any form and compatible with pole systems for converting to Cadillacs and Towers.

“We have a lot to offer the Pilates community, in terms of product,” Hart says. “We’re also trying to help studios grow and sustain themselves. We realize equipment is not inexpensive, sometimes ‘grow as you go’ is the only way to make it happen.”

Root Manufacturing also offers oak and maple products sourced from suppliers who use sustainable forestry practices. The equipment is all hand-crafted, and there is plenty of information about Root’s materials, as well as a nifty color selector on the company’s Web site. “We’re trying to make a product that is going to last a lifetime and also at the same time be good a citizen of the world,” Hart says.

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness month, and Shape magazine and The Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) are again inviting the Pilates industry to support the cause with their Pilates for Pink initiative.

Like last year, studios and fitness facilities nationwide can sign up to host classes. If you’re interested, e-mail Shape, stand by for your “Pilates for Pink” kit, which includes promotional materials and sign-up/pledge forms, and then host away. Don’t forget to wear pink! Check out the Pilates for Pink site for information about how to get involved or to find participating classes/studios.

And if you can make it to the Big Apple on Sunday, Oct. 4, Shape and the BCRF are hosting “Pilates in the Park” in New York City’s Union Square, with a full day of classes from an array of top instructors. You can check all of that out here. A $25 donation lands you one class and a mat, along with admission to all tents and a host of product samples and giveaways. For each additional class, you’ll donate $5. Last year’s event sold out two weeks in advance so more classes were added this year.

Shape is also offering a new 2009 Pilates for Pink Core Challenge DVD along with 2008’s Shape Mari Winsor Pilates for Pink DVD; a percentage of the proceeds of both benefits BCRF. 

Val Russell and her trapeze, as seen in commercialappeal.comOnce again, our semi-regular rundown of Pilates news from around the Web.

• Memphis Pilates instructor Val Russell has taken her practice into the air—literally—teaching aerial dance on a trapeze rig in her front yard.

• Real Pilates owner and Pilates-Pro.com contributor Alycea Ungaro shared her 9/11 story and recession-beating strategies on the Huffington Post.

• Twice laid-off in Silicon Valley, Dmitry Yudin found a new career—and his passion—teaching Pilates. Here’s his inspiring story from the San Jose Mercury News.

• Dan Walton, owner of Portland’s Studio Blue, increased his customer base by 20 percent by taking his website into his own hands and enrolling in a search engine optimization course. “It’s great to know I can do this myself,” he says. “It’s saved me a lot of money.”

• About.com Pilates Guide Marguerite Ogle explored “Reformer on the Mat.”

• If you have an iPhone, are pregnant, and love Pilates, you’re in luck: Apple has released a Pilates for Pregnancy iPhone app, organized by trimester. It’s based on Sarah Picot’s video, Prenatal Pilates, and her Pilates and Pregnancy Workbook.

• Ever wondered how to do Yogilates? Women’s Health offers three exercises from New York instructor Jonathan Urla.