Tag Archives: pilates on the beach

Chris Hunt: ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Barcelona Style


 

Ice Bucket Challenge

<a href=”http://www.chrishuntwellness.com” target=”_blank”>www.chrishuntwellness.com</a>

So this is the craze that is sweeping the world and has gone viral.

I was challenged so naturally I had to go ahead and tip a bucket of ice water on my head. To be honest, by the time the filming started the ice had melted but the water was still pretty damn cold on a hot August day in Barcelona!

I nominated my friends Robert Steinbacher, Jessica Exposito and Maria Bakhvalova so guys you have 24 hours…

Just so we don’t forget what this is all about, it a way to raise money and awareness for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which is also referred to as motor neurone disorder (MND), Charcot disorder, and, in the United States, Lou Gehrig’s disease. It is a neurodegenerative disease with various causes. It is characterised by muscle spasticity, rapidly progressive weakness due to muscle atrophy, and difficulty in speaking, swallowing and breathing. ALS is the most common of the five motor neuron diseases. One of the famous victims of this disorder is Stephen Hawking.

As well as donating to the charity, I am also having a special Pilates session on the beach in Barcelona this Saturday 30<sup>th</sup> August where the cost is 20€ but all the money will be donated by me to the charity.

I hope to see you all on the beach in Barcelona for some charity Pilates! And keep the ice-bucket challenges going: Robert, Jessica and Maria, I am waiting!

Chris is an international Pilates presenter and educator based in Barcelona, Spain. He is the creator of <a href=”http://www.pilatesevo.com/”>Pilates EVO©, </a>bodyFUNC©, and CEO of Pilates Rehab Limited and Sport Core Strength.  He also organises Pilates Carnival and Fitness Carnival, conventions where all profits go to local children’s charities. For more information about Pilates with Chris in Barcelona, please click on <a href=”http://www.barcelonabienestar.com/”>Barcelona Bienestar</a>. To learn more about Chris, please read <a href=”http://www.chrishuntblog.com/about/” target=”_blank”>Just who is Chris Hunt anyway?</a> You can also subscribe by completing the form on the this BLOG to receive articles and special offers straight to your inbox.

Chris pays 50% of any money made from this BLOG to his charity partners, the other 50% covers the costs. More details can be found by clicking on www.chrishuntwellness.com and selecting the “charity partners” tab.

Pilates and Weight Loss: Maria Menounos

Chris Hunt Pilates Maria Menounos

www.chrishuntwellness.com

Another Monday morning. I always remember the quote “It’s not Mondays that are rubbish, it’s your life that sucks” and that makes me smile as another week begins.

In my article today, I want us (us being the operative word) to talk about Pilates (of course) and also those emotive words diet and weight-loss. Today I would like to know your interest in and experiences about your client’s eating habits and how in your opinion this affects their Pilates practice and the progress that they make.

Diet is of course only one aspect of wellness, but of course it is a very important one. I talked about the outrageous and often false claims that some people make in my previous articles “Vanessa Hudgens: Does Pilates create a flat stomach?” and “Bikini-body using Pilates: Jennifer Hawkins knows better”. I also talked about diet in my article “Demi Moore: Pilates and you are what you eat” so please if you have time read those articles in conjunction with this one.

One of the things that prompted my article today is that I was reading over the weekend about Maria Menounos, so I want us to use her example as a reason to debate exercise and diet. If you have never heard of Maria, she is something of a star now in the diet and weight loss arena. She credits the Mediterranean diet and a combination of Pilates and fitness workouts for her quite stunning 40-pound weight loss. She wrote the inevitable book about her achievements.

The Everygirl Diet: The Cheaper, Smarter, Simpler Way to Better Health

I am very sceptical about “quick-fixes” and miracle diets, and Maria did lose a lot of weight in a relatively short period of time, but it seems that she did it in the right way and in a sustainable way. She is Greek and followed the Mediterranean diet, which emphasizes healthy fats such as olive oil, salmon and avocados, high-quality animal proteins, vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, and seeds. She says that she was raised in a strict low-sugar diet as a child because her dad had type 1 diabetes, so when she went to college, she went overboard indulging all her junk-food cravings.

Tired of being overweight, Maria completely overhauled her diet and began exercising during her early 20s. Within a year, she lost 40 pounds and slimmed down to a size 4. The 5-foot-8 Maria now weighs about 125 pounds. She has maintained an active, health-conscious lifestyle ever since. For exercise, Maria tries to walk 10,000 steps (about five miles) every day and she also runs on the treadmill, takes spinning classes, jumps role, plays basketball, and does Pilates and Krav Maga workouts.

It is my opinion that simple logic dictates that our clients will not make as much progress if they take Pilates in isolation, but how much responsibility do you feel about other aspects of your client’s health and wellness? I talked about what I call “total fitness” is my article “Exercise is only one part of Total Fitness” so today I welcome your thoughts and comments about how you approach other aspects of health and wellness, or if you see you role as purely a Pilates teacher. I appreciate that most of us are not qualified in nutrition so for those who are not, how do you try to approach this topic, if at all? For those of you who are qualified, how open do you find your clients to advice about what they eat?

Monday’s aren’t rubbish. And I am sure that this debate today will make this particular Monday an interesting one.

Chris is an international Pilates and functional training presenter and educator based in London and Barcelona, Spain. He is the creator of Pilates EVO©, bodyFUNC©, and CEO of Pilates Rehab Limited and Sport Core Strength.  He also created Pilates Carnival and Fitness Carnival, conventions where all profits go to local children’s charities. He organises fitness holidays and sports holidays in Barcelona, as well as retreats. For more information about training with Chris in Barcelona, please click on Barcelona Bienestar. To learn more about Chris, please read Just who is Chris Hunt anyway? You can also subscribe by completing the form on the this BLOG to receive articles and special offers straight to your inbox.

Chris pays all profits made from this BLOG to his charity partners. More details can be found by clicking on www.chrishuntwellness.com and selecting the “charity partners” tab.

 

Barcelona Pilates Classes: Under the sun with sand in between your toes

Healthy Beach Barcelona 1

www.chrishuntwellness.com

Barcelona has everything. Sun, sea, beaches, restaurants, shopping, mountains, culture, architecture to name just few. And now it has professional fitness classes as well.

I have created in Barcelona, as a subsidiary of my business Barcelona Bienestar, a new venture called Healthy Beach Barcelona. People say that life is a beach, so why not make it a healthy beach?!?!

Healthy Beach Barcelona offers Pilates but much more. To maximise health and wellness, our bodies need much more than Pilates. So with Healthy Beach Barcelona you can get everything you need to be a God or Goddess. We offer functional and cardio training sessions on the beach and on the terrace in small groups or on a one-to-one basis. We also many other services including massage, meditation, NLP, life coaching, nutrition advice and beauty treatments including gel nails and eye-lash extensions. We offer everything you need to help you become the best you can be.

If you live in Barcelona then you can join us every day. If you coming on vacation then join us during your stay. Or even better, come to Barcelona on a Barcelona Bienestar Retreat and let us organise everything for you.

Life is a beach. Come to Barcelona and let us help you to be a healthy beach.

Find out more by clicking on Barcelona Bienestar or click on Healthy Beach Barcelona.

Chris is an international Pilates presenter and educator based in Barcelona, Spain. He is the creator of Pilates EVO©, bodyFUNC©, and CEO of Pilates Rehab Limited and Sport Core Strength.  He also organises Pilates Carnival and Fitness Carnival, conventions where all profits go to local children’s charities. For more information about Pilates with Chris in Barcelona, please click on Barcelona Bienestar. To learn more about Chris, please read Just who is Chris Hunt anyway?

 

Pilates in Barcelona: Do qualifications and experience matter?

Pilates Barcelona

www.chrishuntwellness.com

Barcelona is a multi-cultural City blessed with many things which makes it very popular as a place to live and a place to visit.

When I arrived in Barcelona from London, the first thing that I did was to establish my own Chris Hunt Pilates group Pilates and functional training sessions and also Pilates and functional training personal training sessions. There is a culture in Barcelona of being outside as much as possible, so it is wonderful for me to be able to teach inside, but to also offer classes and training on the terrace, in the park and on the beach.  I have always wanted to have regular exercise sessions on the beach, and Barceloneta, Barcelona’s main beach is just perfect for that.

My article today is not only about Pilates in Barcelona and Spain, but also about my experience of qualifications and experience, and the relevance of these things.

Pilates in Spain is still developing, and in my experience does not yet have the regulation and certification that I have seen in the UK and some other European countries such as Germany. For this reason it is very important to make sure when you visit a health club, Pilates studio or Pilates teacher in Barcelona that the person who will be teaching you has appropriate certification, and also appropriate experience.

In the UK, the days of weekend Pilates certifications are thankfully long gone. Certification is regulated to ensure that the necessary standards are adhered to. This is a vital starting point for anyone who wishes to pursue a career as a Pilates teacher, and a professional qualification is something that any member of public should look for in any teacher who they think about training with. During one of my visits to Madrid some years ago, I met a Pilates teacher who proudly told me that the extent of her qualifications were the four Pilates books she had at home!

A common comment to me here in Barcelona that worries me is that I have been told by several people that Pilates is not an interesting or worthwhile system. No surprises, it usually turns out that they had one or two sessions with a poorly trained teacher and are judging the whole system on that brief experience.

Experience is an interesting component of overall knowledge. I have 20 years experience, but as with many fields of knowledge, to me it’s not enough to say “I have 20 years experience of Pilates”. That could mean 20 years of doing Pilates wrong. It could mean that in 20 years I have not travelled to experience any different or new ways of teaching. It could mean that for 20 years I have been doing the same things. It does not also give any indication as to the type of experience either. For example my 20 years includes group sessions, personal training, matwork, equipment, Pilates for rehabilitation, Pilates for athletes and Pilates for children etc.

Again in my experience (I can of course only talk from my own experience and I fully appreciate that other people will have different experiences) even when some Pilates bodies insist on their students completing sometime many hours participation in Pilates classes, this still does not guarantee a major benefit because often there is no control over exactly whose sessions are being attended.

Whilst I would usually (but not always) say that having experience is better than not having any experience, when I travel around the world to teach my system of Pilates, Pilates EVO, what I look for in a potential Pilates EVO teacher is yes how long they have been doing Pilates, but what I find in many cases more relevant is what they have been doing for the past few years. Often what they were doing 5, 10 or 15 years ago is now of little real benefit to their teaching today. It is also interesting to me that on occasions meeting a newly qualified teacher can be better than someone who has many years of teaching and thinks they know it all. None of us know it all, and if you ever meet anyone who says they do, smile politely, shake their hand and walk away quickly because whatever experience that will follow will not be a good one, trust me.

And let’s return to the question of qualifications. I am sure that we all know someone who has every qualification going, but is incapable of getting that knowledge across to clients in an interesting and stimulating way. So clients soon get bored and stop their training, or move to a different teacher.

It is about balance and common sense. Yes, it is essential that a teacher has a recognised qualification to show they have the basic knowledge of Pilates and anatomy. But this is only the start of the story. I like to work with teachers who have tried several different schools of Pilates, and who have travelled to experience how different Pilates can be in different countries. I also like teachers who have experience of different types of clients, and importantly who have an open mind to new medical and scientific discoveries.

Perhaps the most important thing I look for in potential Pilates EVO teachers is where they teach from; their heart or their bank balance (when I am speaking at conventions, at this point I double pat my heart, and then double pat my back pocket). We all need to make a living and pay the bills, but if this the only motivating factor in what someone does, whether it is Pilates, any form of teaching, or any job for that matter, then after a while (usually a very short while) it is clear to everyone that their heart is not in what they are doing. And if your heart is not in it, if it is not your passion, then you will never be able to be the best you can be.

Chris is an international Pilates presenter and educator based in Barcelona, Spain. He is the creator of Pilates EVO©, bodyFUNC©, and CEO of Pilates Rehab Limited and Sport Core Strength.  He also organises Pilates Carnival and Fitness Carnival, conventions where all profits go to local children’s charities. For more information about Pilates with Chris in Barcelona, please click on Barcelona Bienestar. To learn more about Chris, please read Just who is Chris Hunt anyway?