Your Guide to Doing Pilates During the Holiday Season

The holidays can be busy, stressful, and hectic, but doing Pilates can help! It can't stop the stress, but it can give you some time to connect to yourself through movement. Check out these tips for building your Pilates practice in the holidays and beyond. 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Pilates Students' Manual, a podcast helping you get the most out of your Pilates classes. I'm Olivia and I'll be your host. Join the conversation and share your thoughts on Instagram at @pilatesstudentsmanual. You can support the podcast by visiting buymeacoffee.com/OliviaPodcasts. Let's learn something new.

Hello, hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Today I'm going to be sharing a guide for how to keep up your Pilates practice during the holiday season. I know [00:01:00] that holidays can be very busy, stressful, and I know that the 2020 holiday season, even though it won't be the same in terms of traveling, perhaps or even, you know, getting together with big groups of family or things like that, it can still be a busy time and a stressful time, even if you aren't doing those things in a traditional way. 2020 has been anything but traditional. 

When I was originally thinking of this episode, it was like, you know, how to do Pilates at the airport or how to do Pilates, you know, for long car rides or things like that. But I still think these are some great tips for getting your Pilates on during the holidays, regardless of how you're spending your winter this year. I do feel like time accelerates in November and December, it just goes faster and faster and then we blink and a decade is passed, right? So these are my tips to helping your Pilates practice continue to happen, [00:02:00] even during the holidays. 

Hot tip number one, schedule your Pilates time. If you are taking a class live, either in person or virtually but live streamed, register for the class. Set the intention and sign up for that class. Mark it on your calendar, whether it's a Google calendar or a calendar application or on a physical planner. Mark out that time as yours, that you're going to be doing Pilates and then make sure that you're not available to do other things. 

Like sometimes things come up and then people are like, Oh, can we do this thing at two? And like you had Pilates at 2:30. Yeah. You're not available to do the thing at two if you already have that time scheduled for Pilates. You really do want to make that a non-negotiable thing in your calendar just like any other appointment or meeting that you have scheduled. 

If you're going to be doing a prerecorded class, that's on [00:03:00] like a membership site or on YouTube or something like that, I would really recommend picking that class beforehand. I know that I'm not alone, that sometimes you can spend as much time browsing Netflix as you could like watching a movie on Netflix. If you like to window shop like me, you could be scrolling through workouts and workouts instead of actually doing a workout. So I try to pick a class beforehand and then already have it good to go so I can just do it. And I don't have to use any thinking power to choose the class. 

Hot tip number two, after you've scheduled that class, hold yourself accountable to being in that class. If you're taking the class live, one thing that I recommend is keeping your video on. I can tell you that I've definitely watched a fair share of classes that I had my video off for. So I find that keeping my [00:04:00] video on keeps me accountable and keeps me going. 

I like to set a reminder on my phone or like an alarm to go off to remind me that it's like, Hey, you've got this class, you got to go, let's do this. And it seems antithetical, but sometimes paying for a class helps. Like when you have some monetary expense associated with it, sometimes you hold that appointment, I don't want to say like in higher esteem, but like, it means more because you invested financially in it. 

So if you notice that you're just not feeling inspired and not able to do these prerecorded classes, sometimes paying for a live class that's happening in real time, gives you a little bit bigger incentive to be there. I don't know if that's just me, but sometimes paying for it really does help. 

Hot tip number [00:05:00] three, if you have a teacher that you love and you want to take class with them, but maybe none of their class times fit, or maybe they were teaching in-person classes and now everything's virtual reach out to them and ask if they do private sessions.

I can tell you from my experience as a teacher, that the holiday month can be really tricky because a lot of clients are traveling and studio schedules can be different and, you know, maybe you're covering other teacher's classes because they're traveling. And like, again, 2020 is not exactly like that, but I don't know. It always brightens my day when someone's like, Hey, do you do private sessions? Because then we can really do some Pilates that fits in your schedule and not worry about a random workout experience, but really having this personalized workout. 

Hot tip number four, take movement [00:06:00] snacks. And this is for the whole year, but especially during the holidays when things can get hectic, doing a little bit of movement frequently is just as good or better than doing an hour long, full blown workout thing. Right? 

Sometimes your schedule allows you to set aside that hour of time. But if you're doing that hour of time class, maybe two or three times a week and other days, it's just not fitting with your schedule. Even just scheduling out little 10 minute breaks or not even scheduling them. Just, you know, you've been sitting at your desk for two hours and you just want to stand up and take a side bend and do a twist, like movement snacks are awesome. 

I think that Anula Maiburg is the person who coined that. I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's an amazing idea. And that the same way you would have a snack, because like you're feeling a little bit hungry, give your body some movement, like its own little snack. Your body [00:07:00] will thank you for it. 

So you could do 10 minutes in mid morning, part of your lunch break, a little bit in the afternoon, a little bit in the evening is like part of a wind down. And that might be a stretch break, grabbing a strap or a resistance band, and just doing some really gentle stretches. You could lie on the foam roller for a bit. If you're feeling adventurous, you could throw in some abs series exercises, but just some things to move. Like our body loves to move. 

And especially with so many of us working from home, and even if we weren't working from home, being at an office and then, you know, commuting for some period of time to get to the office, it's just like a lot of stillness and a lot of sitting and our body doesn't really like that. And that can, you know, as we all know, it can create tension and just overall grumpiness in our body from being constrained to chairs all day. So like give yourself some feel good movement throughout your day. 

And what you're really doing is laying the [00:08:00] groundwork for good movement habits. Right. You don't have to wait until the new year to do a nice thing for yourself. You can do it right now. 

Whenever we're starting a habit. I want to quote someone, but I have absolutely no idea where I read this. If you know of it, do let me know. But this idea that when you're trying to build a new habit, you want to start so small that you can't possibly fail. Maybe instead of saying, you know, I'm going to take 18 movement snacks today.

You just say, I'm going to take one or I'm going to breathe really deeply. It was just like, start so small and then capitalize on your success because, you know, we feel good when we accomplish things. And then you, you know, I'm going to take like three deep breaths before I start work in the morning. That's amazing. Do it. Take three deep breaths. And then when you succeed at that, we can add onto that. By the time new year's rolls around, like you've already got this amazing foundation to keep doing great stuff. 

Coming up [00:09:00] after the break, I'm going to share a couple more hot tips about redefining your workout and redefining your goals and also connect to your personal reasons of why you do Pilates and really use them to inspire you through the holiday season and beyond. That's coming up next.

Hi there. Enjoying the podcast? Me too. Make sure you subscribe wherever you're listening so you get notified about new episodes. And visit buymeacoffee.com/OliviaPodcasts to support the show there you can make a one-time donation or become a member with a donation of as little as $5 a month.

Members get some awesome perks, including a shout out in the next episode, a monthly newsletter, a monthly zoom call with me and more. You can also visit links.OliviaBioni.com/affiliates and check out some [00:10:00] sweet deals on products I use and love. Now, back to the show.

I want to talk about redefining your workouts and then redefining your goals going into the holiday season, which, hot tip number five: redefining your workouts and your goals so that they empower you instead of frustrate you. 

I definitely fell prey to this idea that, you know, it wasn't a workout unless I was sweating or tired afterwards. Like I did use to think about workouts like this, that I had this very sweaty vision in my head of what constituted a workout. 

What Pilates has really taught me is that [00:11:00] sweat is not a great indicator of a good workout. Neither is soreness. You know, we know that muscle soreness just means that you moved your muscles in a way that they weren't used to being moved, which it's an indicator of that, but it's not like an indicator of like strenuousness necessarily.

So if you had a goal or you know that one of your new year's resolutions and that's- my gosh, how is it the end of the year? But if one of your new year's resolutions is, you know, like I'm going to work out every day. Well, let's change what we think of when we think of a workout, because the movement snacks that I talked about in the first part, that's a workout.

Maybe your workout every day is, you know, 10 minutes on the foam roller, just rolling out whatever's feeling tight and you just set aside time to do that. That's amazing. It doesn't mean that you don't set aside an hour to do something really strenuous, a hiit class or Pilates [00:12:00] cardio or things with a higher degree of intensity. That's amazing, but so is a really restorative feel-good workout. 

And so I'm borrowing this idea from Beth Sandlin and Trifecta Pilates, this idea that you can have a workout that fits you where you are, and then you don't need to feel guilty or bad about doing a gentler workout if that's what your body was asking for. So redefine your workout to be really focused on movement and setting aside time for yourself and not necessarily a type of movement. Just movement is great. 

Same thing with redefining your goals. We like to quantify success. I feel like that's a human thing where, you know, we're measuring things like our weight or our body mass index or things like this, but I would really challenge you to set goals for yourself, [00:13:00] both in the holiday season and beyond, that are really about how you feel and maybe the ease at which you can do other things.

 And maybe there's specific growth towards, you know, building strength or flexibility or accomplishing an exercise in the Pilate system, but instead of a number on the scale or a number of calories that we're really focusing on, like a more holistic picture of growth and of wellness that will help you feel better and more accomplished as you're doing your Pilates, this month and every month. 

Hot tip number six, connect to the reasons why you're doing Pilates. Why do you love Pilates? What about Pilates just makes you want to keep doing it and doing it and doing it?

I love to do Pilates because it makes me feel great. It makes me feel [00:14:00] put together, mentally connected, physically connected. I just feel calmer and more centered. And I know that I'm going to feel that way if I do Pilates, even if I don't particularly want to do it, I know that if I do it, that I'm going to have, you know, these feelings afterwards and that's why I do it.

I really want you to connect to your why because, especially in the holiday season, I mean, Thanksgiving, we had like a kind of bout of it, but in like fitness inspiration, like fitspo hashtags- which is not a place that I usually hang out because there can be a lot of negative language around the holidays, around indulging. This idea, you know, that if you eat a slice of pie, you have to run 10 miles to burn off the calories that you had in that slice of pie.

I'm a super, not-huge fan of that kind of post and that [00:15:00] kind of thinking for several reasons. The first of which is that our metabolism is responsible for the majority of calories that we burn in our life, regardless of whether or not we're exercising. Exercising is very important beyond burning calories. 

And it's the holiday season. You should be able to celebrate and enjoy food, and company safely, and just all the great things that come with the winter holiday without feeling guilty about it. You should be able to celebrate happily and joyfully. 

Pilates is not a punishment. Everything that I've ever done in my life that I saw as a punishment, I really didn't stick with for a very long time, whether it was running laps as a punishment when I played soccer or I had a coach that had us do pushups. Like none of those things were like, Oh, well, I'm going to get really good at doing pushups now and show [00:16:00] you. Like, no, like, I was like, I'm over this. 

So I want Pilates to be something that really inspires joy for you. Or at least if not joy, like a deeper sense of connection with yourself and allows you to learn something new about yourself every time you do it. I hope that it allows you to be curious and also brave and try hard things just because you can. Ideally, I hope that you do Pilates because you love your body and you love the things that it can do. Pilates is just another way to celebrate movement and to support your overall health. 

I think those are pretty great reasons for doing Pilates and I hope that you can keep that spirit even if you do see things- you won't see them from me, for sure- but even if you see things that are a little bit more negative or a little bit more shaming. I really [00:17:00] just want you to have the best possible experience in your body at all times and that's whether you're doing Pilates or whether you're eating a slice of pie. 

Really exciting news as the year is winding down in the next couple of weeks, I'm going to be having a party on zoom- I don't know if it's a party, a get together on zoom with my supporters, from the Buy Me a Coffee page. The zoom meetings are really fun. I know, zoom meetings. Just when you thought- that's like the most 2020 thing I've ever heard. 

The zoom get togethers are really great because a) I get to meet you and say hi, and thank you in person for your support and for supporting the podcasts. Right now, I'm in the midst of planning, season three for Pilates Students' Manual and season four for Pilates Teachers' Manual.

And in these zoom get togethers, it's really your opportunity to share your thoughts and help shape the future of the [00:18:00] podcast. Like I'm making this podcast for you as much as I'm making it for me. I want to make sure that I'm addressing the things that interest you and the questions that you have about Pilates. 

So if you want to get in on that zoom get together, all you have to do is visit that Buy Me a Coffee page and make a contribution of as little as $5. That will get you on the list. There's a doodle poll in the works right now, and I hope you'll be able to be a part of this December zoom adventure. I hope you have a great week and I'll talk to you again soon.

Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of Pilates Students' Manual, a podcast helping you get the most out of your Pilates classes. Be sure to check out the podcast Instagram at [00:19:00] @pilatesstudentsmanual and subscribe wherever you're listening. Interested in teaching Pilates too? Check out Pilates Teachers' Manual, available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

I hope to see you next episode. Until next time.