Pilates and the Older Adult Population

Welcome to the Living to 100 Club Podcast. Here's our host, Dr. Joseph Casciani.

Good day to everyone. I'm Joe Casciani, your host for the Living to 100 Club Podcast. Our conversations are all about aging well and doing what it takes mentally and physically to live longer and healthier. Our guests share insights and recommendations about successful aging, stories of perseverance, and inspiration about our future. Today's program looks at the benefits of Pilates for the older adult population. Our guest is Leslie Logan, a nationally certified Pilates teacher, We discuss what Pilates is, its history, and the benefits it offers to its students. How does Pilates affect our strength, our flexibility, our posture? Why is Pilates appropriate for the older adult population? We'll explore these questions and others. First, a little background. Leslie Logan, NCPT, is the founder of online Pilates classes .com, the first free online catalog of Pilates exercise tutorial videos where you can also find weekly online mat classes and workshops. We're not teaching from her studio in Los Angeles. Leslie can be found traveling the world leading Pilates retreats or offering Pilates business coaching to studio owners and other instructors through her private mastermind group. Leslie, welcome to our program.

Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to talk to you.

Yeah, you're, you're very welcome. I'm so excited to have you on our program today. I always like to open by asking our guests to tell us a little bit about the journey that brought you to where you are today. You've been on quite a ride, I know, so share with us a little bit of the highlights of this journey.

Yeah, thanks. I will say that it feels like a whirlwind in a good way.

I—

hi everyone, I'm Lessa Logan. As Joe mentioned, I'm from Northern California and I moved to Orange County, California for college, not because I wanted to really be there, but I just wanted to get out of town. I lived in a very small town and I just never felt like I belonged. And I had friends, it just didn't feel like it was like my home, right? I think some people can understand. I couldn't articulate it then. And then I went off to college and I was like, these— this is not my people either. So got a degree, was running a jewelry store, and I was like, this is—

I love this.

It was so fun selling purses and accessories. Like, who wouldn't want to do that job? It's like, for the girls out there, it's like, like, like a small town girl's dream job. Anyways, but all of my friends from college were moving away, and I was like, okay, so now I'm in this town and I'm like alone again. Like, I don't really have anything to bring me here. So a girl I worked with invited me to a Pilates class, and I made fun of it. So if you started to be like, I don't really know if I should listen about Pilates. I hope you listen because I really did make fun of Pilates. I thought it was an infomercial workout. I thought it couldn't do what it said it was going to do, but I wanted a friend. So I went to the class and I fell in love with the workout within a few exercises. I mean, like in love. I felt parts of my body I never felt before. As an ex-athlete, I thought that was shocking, right? But I ended up changing my entire work schedule so I can go to Pilates every single day. And then when I moved to Los Angeles, someone said I should become a Pilates instructor. And I randomly found myself studying with one of Joseph Pilates' clients.

Yes.

Yes. So, and that basically took me around the world and to where we are today.

Wow. Wow. Well, we'll hear much more about your programs and your offerings and your classes. So tell us, tell us about the history of Pilates and its founder Joseph Pilates. You trained under one of his students. So What's, what's the history like about Pilates?

So Pilates has got a really unique history. We've got, like, it's great for a movie, to be completely honest, because Joseph Pilates was definitely a prisoner, and they say of war, but I think because he was a stowaway on a boat during World War I. He was like, being a— doing a crime. And he ended up in prison in the Isle of Man during World War I. He actually was a trained boxer and circus performer. And he developed his type of working out, um, while he was in prison, so the stories go. Now, there's a lot of stories out there that you'll read that sounds like one of them is that people in his internment camp did his workouts, and so when the Spanish flu came through, no one got sick. That has not been proven, but I do love that story a lot because it's a twist. Yeah, yeah. Well, because if you're moving, you're usually— your immune system is a lot stronger than if you're sedentary. So anyways, he got out of the, uh, prison. He ended up moving to the US in New York in the early '20s, and he brought along his method of movement then. And so here he was on Eighth Avenue in this grungy apartment with his workout equipment, and he taught all these people. He was really like stubborn about what his work was and how he taught people. So he would teach you some privates and then you would just show up on your own, pay $5, which in the '30s was a lot of money, pay $5, and you would work yourself out. And that's one of the things I really love about the story 'cause so many people think, "I must have one-on-one sessions, I must go to a studio." there's all these obstacles and accessibility problems that are there when really his whole mission was to teach you to teach yourself. And he actually lived into his 80s, which is really shocking because he was a cigar smoker. He was a big drinker and he was a very asthmatic kid and he didn't know it, but he had rickets. And so all of this and he lived until his 80s, which is kind of impressive for the time that he grew up in. And I want to tell this really cool story because I think you'd nerd out. In Germany, when he was born in 1883, when they built houses for the rich people, they would air the houses out by letting the poor people live in them. So you would live in this house with all the chemicals coming out of the walls, and then they would move you out, and then the people could move in once it was safe for them to live in there. So he— isn't that crazy? So here he was able to just like really strengthen his body, and he really wanted everybody in the world to do his thing. So that's who Joseph Casciani was. It's kind of the history of it. And then after he died, the people who were his clients were the reason why it continued. They bought their own studio and they, and they just kept working out. And then dancers became teachers and they took it around the world.

Well, well, and you were trained then, as I said earlier, by one of Pilates' students, one of his clients. And, um, so how is, how is Pilates different from other forms of exercise movement programs? What, what, what makes it unique?

Yeah, so I think what makes Pilates really unique is that it really is Pilates and what you're already doing, not Pilates versus, whereas a lot of modalities can be like, this is the thing that you do. You can, like, if you do cardio, let's be really realistic about that. You are doing cardio, and yes, the muscles are being worked, but when the cardio is over, you're done burning calories, and you're not actually doing a lot of strength-based workout in that. Whereas when you're doing a Pilates practice, you can actually get your cardiovascular system up and you can bring it down because each exercise has its own rhythm. So you really can go up and down and up and down as you start to learn the movements. Because what makes Pilates very different than anything— and I weight train as well— is that when you weight train, you do some sets, you rest, you do some sets again, you rest, right? You do these, you repeat the exercise usually 3 times. In Pilates, we take one exercise and ideally once we've learned it, we move it into the next exercise. So there's a transition. So there's actually no break that's happening. And when you're new, obviously there's breaks. But when you're— once you know it, you actually just move from one exercise to the next. So you get that cardio going because you never stop. But it's a strength-based workout. So it's kind of the best of both worlds. However, what I really think makes it also unique is that there's a lot of balance, balancing of the body and working on balancing just like your imbalance, like you're like standing on one leg, stand like sitting down, standing up without using your hands. Which we can talk about why that's so important to youthfulness in our bodies. The other thing is that there's a ton of work on— because it works, because it's a full-body workout in every exercise, there's a lot more lateral muscular work done. If you think about squats and lunges, it's all frontal plane, right? Maybe you work your back, but most people are not doing lateral exercises, exercises that work your your hip muscles and your obliques. Those are super key to not only having strength and balance, but also having usefulness of your spine and being able to quickly react to things. Like if you are walking down the street and you go to— like you trip on something, you're going to want your whole body to work together to balance you out. A lot of people do a lot of things like bicycling, running, The, the tried and well, like, you know, all that kind of stuff, all frontal plane. We're not getting that side stuff. So it's definitely essential to add into your repertoire. I'm not going to make you take anything out, but I think what you'll see is that you start to do everything better.

Yeah, interesting. So it complements what we're already doing, as you said. We don't replace it. And it also doesn't have the reps that other weightlifting and strength training does. So you're completing one exercise and then going to another level and maybe a little bit more strenuous and continuing your program.

Yeah. And that's what I— so a lot of people are probably thinking, I'm not flexible enough for Pilates. And I find that to be hilarious because I'm like, where are you going to get flexible?

You can't do it.

What are you going to be doing? But most people will just start to stretch. So there's like, if you're sitting in a chair and you just fold over your legs or you're sitting on the floor and you just fold over, that's a passive stretch, and you will feel more flexibility after doing something like that. The problem is you don't actually keep that. It starts— you just go back to life. So what we need to create flexibility is an active static stretch. So that means you activate the muscle while you're stretching it. And when you do that, you actually increase flexibility over time. So you don't— so you're not going back to square one. You're actually getting more flexible. And that kind of flexibility is key because you— if you are too strong, you'll just become tight, and that creates injuries. But if you're too flexible, that creates injuries. So we want the balance to be there. And that is one of the things that I love, is I can't get that from anything else. If I'm weight training, I'm not getting more flexible. And the way most yoga classes are taught, I'm only getting flexible. So having that balance allows us to have a body that's able to react to the life that we're living.

I see. Yeah, that's good. That's helpful. So what's the optimum number of classes per week, would you say? Couple or—

Yeah, so here's the deal. I mean, I'll say any Pilates is better than no Pilates.

Okay. Yeah.

But that being said, there's been tons of studies out there that if we do anything one time a week, we're not really— I mean, you might feel really good afterwards, which you will, but you're not necessarily going to get the benefits quickly. So ideally 2 to 3 times a week hitting your practice. And what is really cool is it's okay if it's 10 minutes. If it's 10 minutes, you could do it 4 times a week, right? Um, especially with the mat work, you just need room on your floor, or you can do some exercise on a wall even, um, if you're not able to get down onto the floor yet right now. So I would rather people do a quality of workout versus a quantity of time. And then that way we can get a quantity of sessions in a week.

Okay.

So quality over quantity. Now, in terms of the Pilates studios, I had an office and there was a Pilates studio not far from where my office was, and they had a lot of equipment and floor exercise equipment. And is that not so needed anymore? I mean, do we really need that equipment, or can we do Pilates solo without—

I love this question. Yeah, so Joseph Pilates created the mat work first, and he's like, everyone can do this anywhere. But the problem was some people just couldn't understand how to do the mat work. So that's where he started creating all the equipment. Okay, now do you need the equipment? No, you could just keep practicing the mat and eventually get better at the mat. However, you may be in a situation where you do need the equipment. When I say that, it may be that you actually have to get stronger with more support. The reformer which is what most people have seen. It looks like a weird bed where the, the bed goes back and forward and there's like a foot bar and there's some straps. I would not recommend people start out in a classroom environment with that. I would recommend that you start out with some one-on-one sessions because you do want to understand the safeties of being on that reformer before you're in a class. And then ideally you use that reformer or the other equipment to get to being able to do the mat practice. Because the mat practice is very hard. If it feels easy, there are some connections that we haven't made yet, and that's okay. We'll get there. But it is really hard because you don't have anything holding your legs up but you. You don't have anything holding your head and chest up but you. So if you are relatively healthy and you can get down on the floor on your own and get back up, the mat's going to be great. But if you do have some imbalances, some aches and pains, if getting onto the floor is hard for you right now, I would recommend finding a teacher or studio that specializes in your situation, getting some one-on-one sessions, and, and making sure they are assisting you to getting to do the mat work so that you can have more accessibility to your practice.

Yeah. So I'm curious, um, so a little bit of discomfort is needed for each of these kind of programs. I can see that. Yeah. If it was easy, we, we wouldn't hate exercising so much.

Well, there's also a difference between pain and hard, and I think we have to recognize recognize that.

Yeah, yeah, it should be hard, shouldn't be painful.

You're right, right. So if there's— if it— and that's something that like you may not understand yet in your own body. And I had to— I remember what I, I had broken my leg and I was working with my trainer and he was having me, after I was able to be on both legs, he was having me do something. I said, I can't do that. He's like, you can't do it because it's painful? You can't do it because it's hard? And I was like, oh. I mean, I was definitely scared, right? Especially if— I, I hear you. If you're someone who has some, has some back injuries, some shoulder issues, you're worried about moving because when you move, like, you've hurt yourself, for sure, definitely, I would feel scared too. But there is a difference between a challenge and pain. And we are— a challenge is good for your body. It's what keeps it strong and keeps it going.

Yeah. Well, any, any guesses on the difference? How do you distinguish one from the other?

Um, that is a great question. I think it's going to be individual and also on the injury. For me, where the pain was, was very acute to the area of where my injury was. But when it was hard, it was my whole body.

Yeah.

Okay.

Lower back pain is clear, right?

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. I could see that's— and there's probably some overlap between the two sometimes, right?

Yeah. And also, it's good to be talking with your body. Your body is telling you things all the time. And if you are listening to it, you'll start to understand. What it's saying. You'll start to know, like, that's a no-go zone for me, right? Like, I can feel on the dog walk now immediately when my gait has gotten off and I am causing pain to my leg. And so I'm like, oh, I need to pay a little bit of attention. Obviously I'm tired, so my leg is turning in. But that took me years to understand for myself. So I think if you— if you're listening to this, you're like, I don't even know what my body is saying, that's okay. Especially if you're in a Western culture, we taught you to not listen to your body. We taught you to, like, take a pill and cover it up. So, so it's okay to be learning this new language, but allow yourself to, to, to learn that, to kind of dance with that and play with that. And then, and then journal, write down how you felt when you got up, how you felt when you did the move, and how you felt afterwards. Hopefully you feel invigorated. Like, after Pilates session, even if I'm tired— like, today I have one for myself, and I hate working out 1:30, but that's my teacher has a time. I hate it. There's nothing that brings me more, more frustration than an afternoon workout. But afterwards, I'm always glad it was over, even though it was hard. So if after your workout you are exhausted and like barely able to walk out the room, that particular teacher or session is not the right thing you need right now. And so it's about investigating and finding one that works for you.

Yeah, so there's a fine line. Yeah, I, I like what you're saying about listening to our body and the voices and there's probably some voices that we've never heard from before. We don't recognize— what's that voice in the distance? I don't, I don't remember hearing from you before. So that's what we want to pay— we turn up the volume and try to listen to more of that, more of that language coming at us. Yeah.

Well, and what's so cool about Pilates versus other modalities— like when I was at the gym last night doing my weight training, the trainer was like, okay, every minute on the minute you're doing this thing. And so I could do the thing and think about how much work I had to do. I didn't have to think to listen to my body because I was like just doing these amount of repetitions over time. And I could list, like, you know, pretty safely I could think about other things. But to do Pilates correctly, you actually have to think about what's happening, what's moving where, because it's not just stepping forward and stepping back like a lunge. You've got to reach your legs out and squeeze them together. You've got to squeeze them not just from your inner thighs, but from your glute muscles too. And you have to make sure that when you send your legs out, you don't tip your pelvis in a way that your lower back's arching. So now you have to think about that. And so in the beginning, you can't think about all these things, but over time you get better about controlling your body. Pilates used to be called Contrology— control of— right, study of control. And so you can't even think about the worries you have about your life or the things you're going to get at the grocery store. And so all you can do is listen to your body. And over time, you know, parts of your body, you're going to start to understand what they're saying.

Yeah. So that's the importance of awareness and focus, right? We can't do it without the focus. As you say, every movement we have to be conscious, and it's got to be a deliberate movement so we know exactly what we're doing and paying attention to that. Yeah, that's central. Sure. Yeah, sure. So I guess if we have lessons one-on-one or group lessons, that's one thing, but can someone do Pilates without attending a class online or in person? Can we do that without?

Yeah, 100%. And I hope you try. So there are plenty of options out there. I have one, and we definitely are more of an all-levels mat class. However, we do have an intro series. So when you're in the intro series, we teach you over 3 classes up to about 20 of the 34 main exercises you'll do. And what you'll notice is, as you mentioned earlier, one exercise builds onto the next and builds onto the next. And so the permission that we give all of our members is, if you can't do this exercise yet, which one can you do? So whatever one you could do is eventually going to help make it so you can do this one. So if you can't go overhead right now, or that's just not even an option— I have a woman who does our classes that she doesn't do anything overhead. She's got a fusion, doesn't do it. But she instead does an exercise she can do. And so what's really cool about this, when you practice your Pilates, you are not just practicing Pilates, you are practicing how you do things in life. Everything, anything we do one way, we do everything that way, right? So if you are asking yourself, okay, I can't do that, what else can I do? What else? Oh, I can't— I get— what else can I do? If you're focused on what you can do in that practice, eventually over time you're going to see less obstacles in your life because you're okay, what can I do? So there's a roadblock down the street, okay, where can I drive? You start to train your body to think about what is possible. And so it's— that's really cool. But we have an intro series where a lot of people take those classes, and then you can just keep taking those classes. Like, the sign that you're a more advanced person is that that class gets really hard.

Um, it doesn't get easier, it gets hard.

It gets harder because you just— sure, you start adding in more muscles. And then if you want to take our weekly classes, you can. Um, and what's cool about our platform is that you can ask us anything. You can literally take a picture of yourself or a video of yourself and go, am I doing this right? And myself or the teachers will actually give you feedback. So it's kind of like having a teacher but having the price point of being in a class.

Wow. Well, so I know the audience, people who are listening may not have been trained in Pilates. Some of them have, hopefully, but maybe they haven't. And I wonder if you can offer some 1 or 2 exercises that we could do on our own without The one-on-one? I mean, yeah, without— yeah, taking a class.

So, okay, one, one that you can— that I really love having people do when they are at a wall. So I'm going to describe a wall one, and the reason I'm describing this is the most safe and also challenging exercise you can do. Anyone can do listening. So when you get to a wall, you need enough space on the wall for your head, shoulders, and hips to touch the wall, and your feet are going to be a little bit away from the wall. Now, the more tight you are, the more your feet are going to have to get away. The more flexible you are, or the more you want to challenge yourself, the closer to the wall, like even to getting your heels on the wall, you could get, right? But I typically go one foot distance away from the wall, one of my own feet. Then you bring your heels together, toes are apart, so you're in a slight turnout, and you'll make sure that you're not locking your knees. So like literally like soften those knees because I want you to stand in your feet. And this is key. A lot of people, if you're listening to this podcast while you're standing in line at the coffee shop, I want you just to double-check. Are you standing like with your knees locked out, your lower back forward, all the weight's in your heels? That's typical. We do that a lot. And that is one of the reasons why so many people have low back issues is because they're not staying in their muscles. They're just staying in their joints. So your knees are soft. Going up the chain, your hips. So your butt, your lower back, your low ribs. The space between your shoulder blades, all that is trying to come into the wall. Now, how does that work? It's not going to be gravity. You're going to have to use all of your muscles. You're literally pulling your stomach muscles in. You start to breathe in through the nose, everyone, into your lungs. Very important. There's a lot of science around breathing. And in Pilates, Joseph Pilates was very big on learning how to breathe. And we must breathe in and out through our nose whenever possible. A A, it's going to prevent a lot of infection. B, that's what it's designed for, believe it or not. And if you are having issues breathing in through your nose, the cool thing about your body is it doesn't want to die. So yes, I don't want you to tape your mouth closed, but try to breathe into your nose. Your body's going to find the pathway to get some air in eventually, and you'd be surprised what you can do. So breathe into your nose, into your low ribs in the back. So many of us breathe into our chest. We breathe into our belly. We don't breathe into the back of our lungs. And what you'll learn when you do Pilates is in life you do what's called abdominal thoracic breathing, meaning you inhale, your lungs get wider, your chest lifts, and your belly fills. Exhale, everything comes in. But when you do Pilates, you actually can't breathe into your belly because we need those muscles to stay on. We need them to stay contracted. So you breathe into the back of your lungs, which is so cool because we have these massive lungs that we're not taking full advantage of. So you breathe into the back of those lungs, it's going to take up space on that wall. You're going to pull your shoulders back and you're going to pull your head back. And I know this is a lot of stuff, but I really want to make sure if you're doing this while you're listening that you feel like you are being taught, because this is how I teach. I want to make sure everyone feels like, like I can see you. Now your arms are by your side, and what I want you to do is just start to pump your arms forward and back. So it's like little flutters, almost like you were like flutter kicking in a pool, but doing with your arms. Okay. What you're doing while you're pumping your arms, you're inhaling through your nose for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, exhaling for 5. So there's 5 pumps for an inhale, 5 pumps for an exhale. As you do this, I want you to notice, does your head come off the wall? Do your— does your back pop on and off the wall? Does your belly pop on and off the wall? What is happening in your body? The goal is that everything in your body is working and staying like— is trying to stay connected while you pump your arms, because here's Here's what Pilates is. Pilates is the art of supporting your entire axial skeleton, so from your head to your tailbone. Notice we put that, we put that entire part of the skeleton on the wall. We ask the muscles to support it there, and then taking your appendicular skeleton, your arms and your legs, and doing something with them to see if they can disconnect what you just put together. And so those pumps are designed to try to disconnect you, and your job is to stay connected the whole time for 10 breaths. That's exercise number 1. Wow, try to do it for a minute and believe it, you'll get your cardio up, you'll start to see your posture gets better. It's amazing.

Wow, that's super, that's, that's great. And I, I'm sure our listeners will enjoy that, help practice, find a wall and try to keep these steps in mind and maybe even write them down. And here's what I need to do. Yeah, that's great, that's great.

And then if you can get on the floor, what I'd love for you to do, there's a ton that I could teach you, but The one that I think would be great and is easy to hear and do is, is called the single leg kick. And this one is so key at reversing our heads coming forward because we're on our computers too much and we're on our phones too much and we drive a lot. So you come onto your stomach and you prop yourself up on your forearms. So it's kind of like if you were to hang out at the beach, right? You're like looking at the ocean, prop yourself up. Now what I want you to do is make sure that your forearms are parallel to each other and you can make fists with your hands and you can push those fists down so your arms arms are really pressed into the ground, almost like you're about to do a forearm plank. Okay, then double-check that you're not putting your shoulders in your ears. So you can even sink into your shoulders and then push them away. Just see where you are, because we're not hanging out at the beach. We are showing off how strong we are. So we're literally about to pop up into a plank. I'm not gonna make you do that, but that's how strong it should feel in your upper body. Your head is not looking down, you're looking up and away. So not up at the ceiling, but maybe like halfway up where the ceiling meets the wall. Okay? Your neck is part of your spine, everyone. They forgot to do that because they named it the neck, and so we think it's something separate, but it's actually part of your spine. So we don't want the neck to have too many wrinkles. So I don't want you to lift your head all the way to the ceiling, but I don't want your head hanging down. So you find that long— like long neck, like a turtle coming out of its shell. Then your legs, you have your toes pointed and you're pressing the tops of your feet down. This right here is already a lot of work. You're actually putting an extension in your thoracic spine, which is where we all be working our extension. Most of us work our extension, our lower back. It's really good at extending. We actually need to work the thoracic spine because it has a little bit of extension. We want all of that. And then you pull your stomach away from the floor. So it may still be touching because we all have different shapes of bodies, we all have different lengths of torsos, but you're trying to get the muscles to energetically pull away from the floor. And as you do that, without changing anything from the tailbone to the crown of the head— because remember I told you we got to keep all of those muscles working— now we have to work the legs. We're going to kick one leg towards our seat. If you kick that leg towards your seat and your whole body bounces forward or your lower back kicks down, we lost the connection. We lost our Pilates connection, right? So when you kick, it's not about touching your heel to your butt. It's about doing a hamstring curl that's enough of a challenge that your whole body has to work together against being kicked around. Then you'll feel a stretch of the front of your thigh. You'll feel your hamstring and glute working. This is super important for posture. It's super important for health. It's super important for you to stand up off of a low toilet and getting back up, getting off the floor. Press that leg down. You kick the other leg 2 times. Kick, kick, switch. Kick, kick, switch. And you do 5 to 10 times. And you're— and that's, that's the exercise. And I— if you do that every day and you do the other thing every day, I think you're going to feel really good. And then if you want more, you can get more somewhere else.

Sure. Wow, thank you. That's great. Great. You know your stuff, I can tell.

I am obsessed with it. I like, I mean, like, so I told you guys I thought it was like infomercial workout and it has. I am stronger today than I was when I found Pilates when I was 25. I have more flexibility, more balance. I can do things like I'll go to a Thai kickboxing class with a friend and I can do it. Even though I don't know what I'm doing, I— my body can work together and figure it out. I'm not afraid of falling or things like that. I can pick up a heavy suitcase. When we moved, I could do things. And all of that is because I do Pilates. So I think we tend to focus on the wrong things. We're like, oh, I have to go practice that to get better at this. But if we actually just practice our Pilates, we can— there's so many things that we're already at the beginner, intermediate level of just because we got to know our body and we allowed it to have this balance. And to be challenged in this way. And I, I have seen my client— I had a client, I got him at the age of 60. He was a retired dentist, so head was super forward, shoulders were super forward, and he hated Pilates. He freaking hated it. His wife dragged him to me. He came every week, and then one day he realized he was taller than his friends. Oh, taller than his friends, and his golf game got better. Oh, when that's very important to people in his group. So he started coming 2 times a week, and if he couldn't come on Sunday, he found a different day. And I taught him until the age of 72, and at 72 he was taller than the day I met him, and he was keeping up with people in their 50s, and he and his wife were doing hikes when they were traveling. Like, he got more life back. So instead of thinking, I'm 60 and I can't do all these things already, Now he's 72 and he's doing things he couldn't do when he was 60. That to me is humongous. We had like— what an amazing gift we could give someone. And it's all just about having a movement practice. It's not— doesn't have to be like— we don't have to like burn a ton of calories at the gym. I'm not saying you can't have some foods. Like, it's just about really like— like challenging your body in a way that it can show up for you and do other things.

Yeah. So the beauty there is that we focus on the process and not the objective necessarily, not to get stronger, not to increase our balance. It just happens. It's just kind of the serendipity that, that comes about from this type of exercise.

Yeah, I had an, I had an 85-year-old. I have this story, it's amazing. She hated this one exercise because it was just marching. So we just stand, stand up, layer one arm on top of the other, and then pull one knee up as high as it can without hiking your hip, set it down, which is harder than you think. So to pull the leg up without hiking the hips, you just pull it up as high as it can. That means hip flexor stomach muscles, and you got to stand on that other leg. Set it down without shifting too much. Pick up the other leg. And I would make her do it after every session. I looked at the clock for 1 minute we're doing this, and she hated it. She's like, why are we doing this? And I said, one day you're going to know. And guess what? A week later, after she complained, she came up to me. She said, I was walking down these steps. So if you all know Rodeo Drive, there's these steps that are very photo— like, they're in a lot of movies. They're steep. They're not very wide. She's walking down the steps. She had a bag in one hand and a phone in the other. She tripped on a step. She's 80-something years old. That is not a good fall to have. Her legs went pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, and she caught herself down the steps, and she made it all the way down to the sidewalk, and she walked a couple steps, and she realized her body just did the marching in the air and like got her up, and she didn't have to think about it. So it's about like taking the life we want to live and the things we don't want to have happen to us, and then training our body to being able to respond to those things without our brain having to, like, be part of— our conscious brain being part of it.

Sure.

And it was really cool. It was so cool. So she did it every day on her own after that.

Wow. Yeah. So the body recovered. She lost her balance or she tripped, and the body just naturally recovered after this series of exercises. That's beautiful. Sure.

Yeah. I used to teach people— I tell people I teach people to fall better. Yeah. Um, I was walking my dogs, and I was definitely not paying attention. I was looking at something on my phone, and I just— I didn't even miss a step. I just like— either the sidewalk got a little higher, but I definitely just like— my foot slid and I started to fly through the air. And you know, Joe, the worst thing you can do is like put a hand out, because like, people— we want to, but if you put a hand out, you end up like breaking an elbow or a wrist or doing your shoulder. Yeah, yeah. Well, I flew through the air, like flew through the air, and landed on my stomach, and it definitely knocked the wind out of me. I was wearing shorts, shorts. I had no cuts on my legs. I had no cuts on my hands. I got up, definitely felt like the wind got knocked out of me, but it's because of years of practicing this one exercise called Swan, where you lift your arms and legs up without— and having the longest spine possible. And I just flew through the air. I don't recommend falling, but we're gonna fall. Like, that's kind of life.

And so how do we train our body to react for I like the sound of this. It all sounds, um, you know, very uplifting. And not just, um, this strengthening our bodies and increasing the balance, but that connectedness that we have to all of our limbs and all of that. And that, that kind of freedom that we get when we're so connected. I can see that.

Yeah. Yeah.

So tell us about your— tell us about your programs online. I know you have a beautiful website and a number of offerings Tell us about what you offer to members.

Yeah, so onlineplacessclasses.com, which we call OPC for short, it is— it is a place you can take with you wherever you're going. And we have options for you based on the equipment you have access to. So most people listening will have access to a mat, which is just space on the floor between a hotel bed and a wall, between like where you work out already. Maybe you even have a gym membership. You can literally just take us with you, log in, press play, to take the workout. And we do a 30-minute mat class that releases every Tuesday. And the reason we release a new one every Tuesday is because you take the one from the last week away. And why do we do this? Because I'm an accountability queen, and I know people, their higher self signs up for something and then their, their life gets in the way and they don't do it. And I don't want that for people. So instead, we give you access to that class for a week. And here's why: you take the class as many times as possible. Remember I told you about my intro series? You take that series as many times as you want, and you can compare yourself to yourself. And this is very important because oftentimes we compare ourselves to other people we're working out with, and you can't do that. You don't know how long they've been doing it. You don't know if they were a gymnast before they found this, right? So then, um, you start to see where you're making improvements. Each class has a different theme, focuses on something in like a movement to be able to achieve, or a muscle connection we want you to have that you can take with you into the next class, right? And then every month we actually release a 50-minute class. So if you have the MAP membership, at any given time you have 2 classes to choose from, a short one and a long one. Now we believe finishing is optional, so do the best you can with the time you have. But we give that for those people who are like, I want an hour workout. That's fine. You can have that 50-minute one and you can do that one as many times in the month as you want. And so then we have a group and it's in Facebook. And if you hate Facebook, I get it. But we do have that group and you can actually ask us anything. You can celebrate your wins. You can ask questions about your exercises. And once a month we actually film the 50-minute class for the month, the upcoming month, live. So you join me, uh, you are not being filmed, but you're on the Zoom call and you're doing class with me. And at the end, we do a little hangout, whether it's a happy hour or coffee chat, and we talk about life, or we talk about exercise that challenge us. I can— myself or the other teachers can look at your form, provide feedback. You get to be in that community, which is really key. And then if you have access to other equipment like reformers or Cadillac's window chairs, we have different memberships for those people. But every membership includes the mat, and that's because that's the one that's the most— it's the hardest, but it's the most accessible to all of us. We don't need to have anything fancy, we just need everyone on the floor.

Yeah, that's kind of the foundation for the program. Sure. Yeah. And what I love, what you said about not comparing ourselves to others, because that's a trap. We know that. It's, how do I— how am I doing compared to where I was last week or last year? That's but that's what's important.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Isn't that like way more freeing too? I mean, no one really wants to evaluate themselves that often, but like, it is way more freeing to just compare yourself to you.

Well, it's also reinforcing too. We, we see that those little, little bits of success and little bits of progress and turtle steps, I call them. But every time we do that, it builds that confidence and it builds our self-efficacy and our momentum. It keeps us kind of driving forward.

Exactly.

It's great. Sure, sure.

Exactly.

Yeah. So you have Pilates flashcards. Just quickly, what are they?

I do. Okay. So this is for you, whether or not, like, maybe you heard my membership and you're like, "Yeah, Les, that's fine, but I, you know, I'm not really good at that." That's fine. The flashcards are amazing because you can actually— it's a physical product that you can actually look at the exercise. It's on one side. It has a QR code. So just like when you're at the restaurant, you scan it for the menu, you scan that QR code and it actually takes you to the video tutorial. And so that way, if you are a more visual learner, you can see me do the exercise, you'll hear me explain things to keep in mind. And then when you flip the card over, it actually has how to set up the exercise, how to do the exercise, and then remember we talked about transitions, how to transition to the next exercise. So maybe when you're learning, you do the exercise and then you have to look at the card to see how to transition. Great, do one more rep and then practice the transition, pick the next card up. And I'm really proud about those. The mat deck is $49.99. You can get it on Amazon. You can get it on onlinepilatesclasses.com. But it is 40 cards. There is some pre-Pilates exercises in there. And you can do them in addition to having the classes, or you can just take that deck of cards with you to your gym, take them to— when you travel. It fits. It's like the size of a DVD.

Yeah, I love that. So these are the 21st century types of flashcards with QR code. I mean, that's great. You're not just reading. You're actually accessing a live video.

I know, my husband put the QR code on and I was like, this is in February of 2020, I'm like, no one knows what a QR code is, Brad. And he goes, well, we'll teach them. And I was like, no one knows. And then, you know, not that I'm grateful that the pandemic given us a QR code, but when I saw my 70-year-old father like go to QR code and just scan it, I was like, we're in, right?

No more, no, right? Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's great, that's great. So, um, we're just about out of time, Leslie. What, what's one thing you'd like our listeners to take away from this conversation?

Movement heals. Movement heals. And so I know sometimes you don't feel like moving, but I promise you, the more you move your body, the easier it is to move your body, the longer you can move your body. And so I hope, even if it's not with me, that you find ways to move your body.

Great, great. Such an important message. Thank you. Yeah, well, it looks like we're out of time, but before we wrap up, I just want to remind our listeners to visit my website, livingto100.club. Sign up for the email list and download a free copy of my 9 Tips to Make Living Longer Enjoyable. While you're on the website, be sure to peruse our library of blogs and podcasts. So we've been talking today with Leslie Logan. Leslie, thanks so much for being a guest on this program. For those people who might want to contact you, how can they do that?

Um, you can reach me at onlinepilatesclasses.com. We've got a support thing there. Or if you are on Instagram, Instagram. I am on Instagram at Leslie.Logan, um, or you can listen to my podcast, Be It Till You See It. We're gonna have Joe on as well.

Yeah, that's right, that's right. I'm looking forward to that. That'll be later this fall. Well, thanks so much. This was a lot of fun. Learned a lot, and I'm sure our audience learned a lot too. So thank you for having us again. Yeah, and thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. Hope to see you next time.

Hey everybody, Jared Sebaste here, host of Retire Repurposed. This podcast is dedicated to help people transition into fulfilling and purposeful retirements. Retirement is a big life change. In fact, the two most dangerous years of a person's life are the year they they were born and the year they retired. Few people could just flip the switch from working a career 30 or 40+ years, retiring on Friday, without methodical steps to living what we call a repurposed retirement. To listen now, search Retire Repurpose on your favorite podcast platform, Senior Resource, or Life Audio.