Winning Means Staying At Home

Hi everyone. Here’s a quick update to let you know where I’m at — we’re all in this together. On Monday, March 23, Your Pilates Lifestyle closed the studio at the direction of the State of Florida’s guidelines regulating gyms and fitness centers, and in accordance with the opinion of health care professionals across the country.

Although I’m really missing our workouts together and looking forward to the day we can resume our regular Pilates fitness instruction, like millions of others I understand the critical nature of what’s needed to prevent community spread. Needless to say, I’m anxious to reopen, but not before it’s safe for my Pilates family.

Meanwhile, it’s important that we don’t forget the important role exercise and fitness play in maintaining an optimal immune system. Keep your Pilates muscle memory active by making mat basics part of your regular stay-at-home routine. Take a few minutes every day to stretch, bend, and lift.

Keeping Your Distance

Chips and dip while binging on Netflix may tempt us, but balancing that with a walk outside is a definite mental and physical boost, according to this article in Self magazine. If you do head out, remember the correct intervals for physical distancing. Sad to say, it seems that there’s a fair percentage of people new to our park pathways who seem bent on disobeying that much repeated six-foot barrier that helps wall off the invisible invader.

My job, and yours, is to ignore their rude, inconsiderate, and I might add illegal behavior and step way aside to avoid possible infection. Are you a jogger? It’s even more critical to maintain maximum separation. There’s plenty of research emerging on how far our exhalations spread, both passively and during peak cardio activity like running or cycling.

Better Safe Than – Just Better Safe

Guidelines for runners (and I should think anyone who’s actively working their cardiovascular system) means 25 feet or so, based on the cloud we all create when we exhale to full capacity. This means while approaching as well as passing. If that’s a problem where you’re exercising, maybe consider changing locations.

Please stay engaged, stay in touch, and for my clients who are also my friends, I’m eagerly looking forward to resuming our Pilates journey together, again. Stay safe, home, well.

Novel Coronavirus Precautions

We’re now bombarded with a constant stream of breaking news and medical advice about what we should and shouldn’t do as COVID-19 plants its foothold in the United States and businesses have to react. But the best continuing, constant advice? Avoid crowds, sanitize, and wash our hands.

Every 24 hours there’s a new round of insight into the disease. Sometimes it’s bad news, but increasingly there’s reason for optimism. Researchers are focusing the enormous might of the world’s scientific community towards developing an understanding of, and a solution to, COVID-19, and its sure to follow successors. Today, our best knowledge is based on information that’s only a few months old. This will change as data continues to accumulate.

From the day I first opened the door, my studio has been a small, custom boutique, designed to deliver high quality instruction to at most two individuals at a time: privates (1:1), and duets (1:2, usually couples). By contrast, the typical fitness environment serves groups from a dozen or more at a time to hundreds of members throughout the day.

And unlike most (for instance) yoga studios, our equipment is sanitized after each use. If you have any doubts, please feel free to add an additional layer of protection by wiping down your equipment before using.

At YPL, we’ve always followed a “better safe than sorry” approach to keeping the studio hygienic. The gym wipes every client is required to use after every session are effective against both viruses and bacteria. We also encourage hand washing after your practice, ensure isopropyl based hand sanitizer is at hand, and make anti-viral tissues that kill 99.9% of cold and flu viruses available for use.

We’re sanitizing door handles throughout the day, filling out the check-in sheet autonomously, and encouraging extra attention to hand washing after using the bathroom.

And its always been policy to instruct every client, if there’s any indication of flu or cold symptoms, to stay home rather than risk spreading an illness.

Florida ranks among the least immunized when it comes to getting our vaccinations, including flu, pneumonia, and measles shots. While there currently is no treatment for the novel coronavirus and its named infection, COVID-19, we can and will practice proper hygiene with a renewed dedication to inhibit transmission, while hoping that not taking advantage of proven vaccines (flu, pneumonia, measles) doesn’t handicap those who may become infected.

COVID-19 demands special attention, and we’ve redoubled our efforts to keep our space safe. Your cooperation both in the studio and throughout your daily life will help. Thank you for your support.