[pilates] milestone!

[kaberett]

A note from the second of January this year:

* !!! five GOOD roll-ups during warm-up, and 10 (!!!) (admittedly losing form toward the end) IN SEQUENCE

I'd been (and have continued) doing roll-up practice out-of-sequence, before warm-up and its place in-sequence. In retrospect I was definitely losing form before the end of the in-sequence set, but I was so excited at all about actually managing it--

-- wait, okay, so, Pilates roll-up. The full roll-up, which is what I've linked to, involves going from lying flat on the floor with your arms reaching above your head, to sitting up leaning forward with your hands reaching towards your toes, with your legs remaining flat on the ground throughout. The standard modification for if you are, uh, not that strong yet, is to have knees bent with feet flat on the floor, and arms remaining parallel to the floor reaching toward your feet throughout the motion of the sit-up. You can further modify it by keeping your legs and feet slightly separated, rather than tucked in tight against each other.

The thing I was so excited about at the beginning of this year was making it from the seated knees-bent position, feet and legs inner hip-width apart, down to the ground (with control) and then back up again, while keeping my feet in contact with said ground (at least a tiny bit). Managing to reliably make it down and up again both before I'd started properly and in sequence was an enormous delight, even though I had to take breaks and while I was managing to keep my heels anchored the rest of my feet were not necessarily staying on the floor.

So. I've been doing the full Body Control Pilates classical beginners' sequence for just over a year now (apparently), three times a week most weeks. I had to back way off and then build back up post-COVID -- I went from being able to do all 8 roll-ups in-sequence with no breaks to... very much needing to take a break again halfway through, which has been gradually improving to the point that last week I hit the tipping point and have been managing continuous flow again. Which was great. Over the course of that year I discovered why the book says you can use your hands on your thighs to support you on the way up/down if you've not got the core strength to do it unsupported (which made no sense at all to me until I was strong enough to do it at all at which point that clicked too), and got enough stronger again that I didn't need to use my hands to provide that support any more, and worked up to my feet staying much more firmly anchored, and massively improved my form to the point of mostly managing to keep my shoulders in the right place instead of letting them hunch forward.

(The point at which the human behind The Ostomy Studio went from "oh fuck it thinks it's self-taught, how much will I have to correct" to "oh this one is a NERD, de*light*ful!!!" was watching my control and form while I rolled myself down onto the mat.)

And today? Well, after yesterday's delightfully smooth and controlled (no sad little jerk halfway up at all) set, today I managed five pre-sequence Full Intermediate (with genuinely good form... for the most part) plus three (form slipping) in-sequence (before going back to separating legs and running hands up them instead of floating them). And then I went on to discover that actually I can roll myself up as the transition between other moves with much less Lying Very Still And Breathing prepwork than I thought I needed.

I've been actively and deliberately and consciously working on this for well over a year. I'm not quite where I want to be to actually change how I colour that square in in the tracker, from "mostly yellow, some green" to "entirely yellow", but -- I am so close. So close! So unexpectedly!

Incremental improvement. Weeks that were worse that I stuck through, because practising the movements is still good for me even if I'm not performing At My Best in any given session. Mastery and agency: proof that I can learn this from the ground (as it were) up. Faith that I can learn it again, and this time I'll know the way.

Progress. <3

Comments

[kaberett]

!!! APPARENTLY I have been being sufficiently exacting and precise about this that I am in fact within sight of actual full no qualifiers roll-ups??? I just tried (torso on rug, lower legs on wood) speculatively, and while my heels are lifting they're really not doing so by very much at all - like, I know how much work it will take to fix - and that was while tired??? I WAS NOT EXPECTING THAT

[ursamajor]

Hooray for being able to do the thing, multiple times, with better form and less effort than before! I just noted your tag for this and ha, it is so fitting. (And I needed to see it after my crap abortive jog this morning where I made it about half a mile away from home and my head and lungs were like "nope not today wtf;" a good reminder that it's the long-term consistency that matters, not any one individual crappy day.)

[cesy]

Hooray!

[vass]

<333

[silveradept]

Congratulations on your progression.

[brainwane]

Yay for progress!