Pilates King

Back in January, I joined a group of my friends in what we call a Weight Loss Get Healthy Competition. For part of this competition, I get points for doing healthy things on a daily basis, exercising being one of them. In my efforts to "get healthy," I started doing a Winsor Pilates DVD that my sister gave me. A few times, I asked Jacob if he wanted to join me. He politely declined with some little smirk about how men don't do Pilates. Well... much has changed since then!! Read on.

With me stepping it up as far as my efforts towards improved fitness go, Jacob wasn't about to be left in the dust! However, while he is coaching (first basketball and now track & field), he has little or no time left to exercise. He realized that if he was going to exercise, it had to be something that he could do late at night after the kiddos are in bed. Hmmmmm? What could it be? What exercise can one do quietly at home, not spend any money, build muscle strength while getting the heart rate going, tone, sculpt, condition... PILATES!!!

Most nights when I come home from my runs, I find Jacob doing some of these fancy moves. When he first started doing it, Jacob called Lara (we've moved on from Winsor to 10 Minute Solutions with Lara Hudson) a weirdo for being able to do this move and hold it. It didn't take too long before he could do it (I still can't!).
He also didn't understand how she could get that leg straight.
One night when he was doing a flexibility workout, he reached up to the ceiling and put his hand flat against the ceiling. He almost fell over from the shock of being able to do this. Just one week earlier when he'd first started, he could only put his fingertips on the ceiling (Pilates really does lengthen you!). And this morning when we went on a family bike ride, he made a comment about how it was easier to get on his bike than it was last fall because he's so much more flexible (his bike is humongous and even with his height, it's hard to get on).

Jacob is not the only one enjoying Pilates. His high school track kids are also doing Pilates moves now. Even Ammon and Abraham have occasionally joined in on the fun.
Here are Jacob and Ammon doing the move Jacob calls the Bird Dog???

Now on the nights when I don't run, Jacob is the one that encourages me to do Pilates with him! Talk about a complete turnaround!

Even with this newfound venture, he still has a tiny bit of that "Pilates isn't for men" attitude. Just the other night, somebody knocked on the door while he was in the middle of his workout. He scrambled up off the floor, turned Lara off and changed the channel to SportsCenter before answering the door! I laughed so hard when he told me this!

When I asked him if I could blog about this though, he didn't seem to mind. Hey, why not share a good thing???