Pilates and the YMCA

I haven't talked much about my job on my blog, so I thought I'd reflect on what got me where I am. Shortly after Austin was born we joined the YMCA. I was home all day with two little kids, was new to the area so I didn't have many friends and had just had a baby so I was very out of shape. Joining the gym gave me an hour of me time during the day. I loved it and continue to enjoy that me time.

Then winter set in, and winter that year was miserably cold and harsh. Derek's hours at work were getting longer and longer, and while I had acquaintances, I still didn't have many friends to help get through those dark days of winter. A new YMCA had just opened up and I saw they were hiring gymnastics instructors - something I could easily do. But getting a job, no matter how part time, seemed so foreign to me. After all I'd been a 100% stay at home mom for over 4 years - could I really go back to punching the clock. My husband didn't really care either way. He wanted me to be happy, but he also didn't want our kids to get short changed. So we decided I'd try it out and if it was taking too much time from the family, I could always quit.
Working at the Y has some nice benefits. Our family membership is about a third of the cost, we get free child care instead of paying ~$2.25 and hour for the two kids, and program enrollment for things like swimming lessons and soccer is half price. It isn't much, but between what I make and what we save it has definitely added up.

After about 4 months of teaching the gymnastics classes it was summer time and the classes were put on hold until fall, per my request. During this time I talked to the fitness coordinator about being a pilates instructor, and by fall I had gotten my certification and was no longer doing gymnastics but had a pilates class on the schedule twice a week (thank goodness, chasing 6 classes of 3-5 year olds around was exhausting!). The whole reason I decided to get the certification was because I had been taking a really hard pilates class, and then the instructor moved and I couldn't find another class that was hard enough. So I thought , if I can't take a challenging pilates class, then I'll just have to teach one. That's my biggest complaint about pilates is so often the classes are too easy, so my goal is to always teach a challenging class.

I did my certification through a group called Fitour. It's about the cheapest, crappiest certification you can get and the Y may be the only gym that actually accepts it, but I'd been doing pilates for 5 years and didn't feel too bad about it. And for $11 an hour, it wasn't worth the $3000 and extensive hours of training to do a Stott certification. My first class was terrifying! I had everything written out so I wouldn't forget what I was doing, and I had no idea how to actually describe the moves I wanted the class to perform. Thank goodness I only had 3 people there that day! As I've taught for the last year I've gotten very comfortable with the verbiage and usually decide on my drive there what the class will consist of.

At one point I was approached about picking up classes at another gym in the area. It made me realized I didn't want to be just the pilates person, but wanted to be able to teach lots of different things. I regularly sub for step, ball toning and a fab abs class now.

I love working at the gym. Not only do I get paid to work out, which I'd do anyway, but I am someone other than mom there. I have friends there I wouldn't have if I was just another patron. It's like the song from Cheers, "Sometimes you wanna go, where everybody knows your name..." and that's sort of how I feel about the Y. I'm much happier now - even with just my few hours a week.

So here I am, 21 weeks pregnant and still teaching my class. It's getting much harder to do. I'm doing more demonstrating and less participating every class. Soon, I'll be down to just talking and using class members to demonstrate, which just sounds awful to me. Thankfully I have a good group of regulars who come who are very understanding. I'm supposed to teach until Dec. 1oth - I'm thinking that might be pushing it, but we'll see. I really love teaching my classes, love the identity it gives me and the alternate outlet for my energy. I'm sad I'm going to have to take the time off, even though the reason is good, so I want to teach for as long as I can, and pick it back up as soon as possible. I am so much bigger this time already than with the other two I'm really going to need something to get me back in shape!