This week I had the privilege of sharing some of my Pilates knowledge with a bunch of grade 7 & 8’s in Amaoti as part of the life skills program with the Domino Foundation. I was told there would be 80 – 100 14 & 15 year old girls and knew I couldn’t do this alone and so invited 3 of my colleagues to join me. We knew we couldn’t do a traditional style Pilates class with that many kids and so decided to do it more as a boot camp style program incorporating the principles and making it a bit more fun.
We set off in my new Suzuki for her first adventure which ended up on 3 wheels and the girls helping to push my car back out onto the road! My car has officially been christened.
It was an incredibly hot day and we had limited space to do the class. We were allocated the parking lot which was very dusty,but we use what we can.
We started off with a brief introduction to the basic principles of Pilates- we got the girls doing some deep breathing and pelvic tilts which had them all in hysterics!
Once we had broken the ice and calmed down again we set about doing a basic warm up, again leading to hysterics when we showed them the dog wee! (four point kneeling with leg lift to the side as a glut strengethening exercise)
After a 10 minute warm up involving more laughter than anything else (nothing works the abs better than a good laugh!) and a brief demonstartion of the exercises for the next section, we split the girls up into 5 groups of 10 and did a 10 station boot camp style core program involving wheelbarrow walks and partner ball throws with planking and crab wak! It was challenging for us and the girls to try and maintain the principles of Pilates without taking it too seriously and just allowing the girls to have fun. We finished off with some stretches before heading back home. Hopefully the girls benefited and enjoyed the experience.
Thanks to the Domino Foundation for all the hard work you already doing in the community
I loved it and hope it is the start of many more similar initiatives working in the community and eventually empowering community leaders to run their own classes. Thanks to the Domino Foundation for all the hard work you already doing in the community and providing opportunities for us to get involved.