What April's Retreat Taught Me

Impossible Pilates! (photo - not surprisingly - generated by AI!!)

I’ll be honest about something, because I think it’s more useful than pretending everything about the first retreat was flawless.

The April group were lovely....genuinely, I still hear from a couple of them. But between the five, there was a real spread of ability and a fair few old surgeries,injuries and restrictions in the mix, which meant a lot of my planning time went into finding the lowest common denominator every session. The version everyone could do safely, rather than the version that would actually push anyone. I felt that this meant some didn't feel challenged enough, although they all said they were still happy with what was delivered.

I'm happy to provide that level of pilates but I'm aiming for the October retreat to be a little different.

I love it when someone comes in with few restrictions, already moving well, and I get to spend the weekend making them better, stronger -proper progressions, a bit of challenge, work that would look completely different on day four than it did on day one. That’s the retreat I want to run in October, in an ideal scenario.

So if that’s you, if you’re already doing Pilates or something similar regularly, if you think of yourself as active rather than “getting back into it,” if you want four days that leave you a bit stronger and not just a bit more relaxed, this one’s aimed at you.

There’ll still be good wholesome food, the pool, the slow mornings, all of that. But the sessions themselves are going to have some proper substance to them.

I say this as someone who’s spent this year rehabbing my own shoulder, so I’m not exactly precious about working with limitations when they’re there. But I'm looking forward to spending the four days building people up than working around them.

October’s the retreat for that.