The beginning of my Pilates instructor journey.

My name is Charni and this is my first time every writing a blog. If you have any suggestions or advice please leave them in the comments. I would love to improve as I go along.

I started my pilates instructor journey about 3 years ago but lets back track a little to give you an understanding as to why I chose pilates.

I work at an archery range in Zoo Lake (Archers of Zoo Lake) run by a company called Sentient Archery. I started working in the office at Sentient Archery when the company was officially registered. The company was very small at that time so I was pretty much just data capturing. I also didn’t have many skills in dealing with customers but as the company grew so did I. I started dealing with emails under supervision and from there was asked my option on developmental ideas. As I had a good understanding of how and why Sentient Archery ran the way it did, I became more confident in dealing with clientele and became quite good at it. And so the office manager was born :)

Sentient Archery had been running for a few years now and I had started taking part in the sport. A good thing I did, as one of our coaches decided it was time for them to venture off into the big wide world and make a new life for themselves in Scotland. Kyle you are dearly missed at the archery range. So I took the knowledge I learnt from shooting a bow, got my level 1 World Archery and level 1 IFAA instructors accreditations and started teaching people the art of shooting a bow. This is where my love for teaching people how to use their bodies was born. I was challenged every week with people who had entirely different bodies and had to guide them all to do the same movements or at least to the best of their bodies capabilities to shoot effectively. I loved it!

At this point I didn’t fully realise I was “good” at teaching people until someone told me their father took a picture of the intro group I was teaching, saw how I managed to get all of the participants to achieve the same positions with their bodies even though every person in the group was very different . And commented that that is when you know you have a good teacher. I was moved and found a deeper understanding of what a good teacher was from that comment.

Fast forwarding a bit - One day I got a call in the office asking about the property the archery range had been established on. to make a long story short, the grounds will be going up for tender. This left me in a very uncertain way as I had never worked in a “corporate” world, currently had a very free and fun working environment and I never want to work in a 9 - 5 office job 5 days a week, so I had to think of a good back up plan. Now it wasn’t certain if we would be able to retain the grounds or not so my friend and boss (Dean) and I chatted about ideas that were multifunctional and just like that Pilates was on the board. Being a Pilates teacher was something I could move over to permanently if needed, it was complementary to archery so it could be used at the range if we retained the grounds and, what a bonus, it encompassed the things I loved. Movement of the human body and teaching.

I spoke to one of our advanced archers (Claudia) at the range, who had done a pilates course, for her opinion on a good organisation to do a course through. Claudia said BASI (Body Arts Science International) pilates was pretty much the only organisation I should look at. And to my surprise one of the archers in our beginner classes, who was a physiotherapist, had actually done the course and recommended it too. That was it. I signed up and began the Comprehensive ( Equipment and matt) course. I mean if you going in, go in big right??? Keep in mind I had only done a hand full of sessions before signing up and boy of boy did I bite off more than I could chew but I feel I definitely pushed myself to rise to the occasion

Soooo back tracking a little, before I actually signed up for the course I decided to investigate the studio that offered the course. Bodymechanix, they are the host studio for BASI in JHB, and they were only situated 20min from the range. If the stars we going to be aligned could they have been even more perfectly aligned to take the path of becoming a pilates instructor, I think not.

I went in for my initial assessment and was pared with the most incredible instructor, Louise Pannell. I do not exaggerate when I say the most incredible instructor, the knowledge she has on the human body, her compassion and dedication was the perfect fit for me and a big part of me falling even further in love with the human body and how it works. After doing a few sessions with Louise I was set on doing this course. Louise is unfortunately no longer a pilates instructor but has decided to move in the direction of teaching Yuan Qigong. If you are interested in learning a very different form of movement with an extremely grounded individual, Louise is the lady to contact. 083 301 6651 :)

And back to Pilates :) Guys if you want to do a pilates instructors course I highly recommend doing a BASI course. Its an absolutely challenging but incredible course to start your career. The course helped me to develop a keen eye for detail and provided me with the information I needed to put that keen eye to good work to say the least. The instructor and owner of Bodymechanix, Ashley Richie, was also an incredible teacher and made all the difference to how dedicated I was to the course.

And so my pilates instructor career began.