We all have clients who travel.
Some sales people still get around the city or region by car but most of our clients who travel do so by air. Some are gone more than they're home.
And in the studio, they pose a special challenge.
When a client is in Australia Sunday through Friday and on my book on Saturday morning, I often structure the majority of the session to get the airplane out of the body, even if they've sat up front and enjoyed the room to recline.
And then there's what you think will be a short hop up from San Francisco that turns into a 5-hour-on-the-tarmac agony as storms blow through and the backlog is worked out.
Short trips or long; they both do awful things to our bodies.
Traveling to the west is so much easier on our clients; approaching the date line the time change is somehow less an issue than heading to Europe. In Auckland, it's the same time tomorrow minus 4 hours and that feels a whole lot easier to cope with than in Rome where it's 9 hours later and we're plopped smack dab opposite of where our body clock says we should be.
When clients are just home from a flight, especially a long one, I like to start seated on the Cadillac and slowly work through shoulder shrugs and rolls, then some easy head nods and nose crosses. Pre-Pilates to the rescue.
Roll Back Bar is next and it's just the thing to release a tight back.
I always teach slowly but with our post-travel clients I go even slower. Haste lessens sensation and for clients who've recently experienced such static stress in their bodies, their first session back is a perfect time to slow things down and reclaim some territory. Without me keeping it slow, they'll take off and just go, with fast and jittery movements as the unthinking antidote to all the sitting, all the carrying of loads. It's my job to line things up just so, in order for their bodies to reconnect to intelligent movement.
I always start Roll Back with bent knees, and after the first few slow reps the legs just seem to straighten on their own when the back and hips let go and the body is ready to rest long and flat.
With the help of our friends, the Spring Brothers, the abdominals are gently prodded into action as opposed to being bitch-slapped by The Hundreds on the Mat or Footwork on Reformer.
I especially like the one-armed Roll Back to open the sides. I stretch them on the one-armed Roll Back. I call for a good 5 or 6 deep breaths, making sure each one is bigger than the last and I increase the stretch with each exhalation.
After one side, it's always fun to check it out in front of the mirror so they can see how their bodies open up and respond to the attention.
Most clients will commit to a daily Pilates practice when they see, feel and function their way to appreciating what a few moments of focused and purposeful work will bring.
Because I take those deep breaths right along with them, we both enjoy the benefit of those and I make sure I"m getting a nice pulled-long feeling in my sides and reaching through my tail, as I'm stretching them.
From there, I like to do a basic Mat and after that, I'll cherry pick my way through a basic Reformer which help them re-enter the vertical world with new length and ease. Post-travel Reformer is always on light springs and I definitely leave out Stomach Massage.
And by the way, I never begin a session for a newly traveled client with Reformer, where the push and compression is way too much of what they've already had more than enough of. The pressure of a shoulder block coming into the shoulder on the glide out is too much like the digging in of the shoulder strap of your carry on, don't you think?
And during that cherry-picked basic Reformer on light springs, taking Short Box to the Ladder Barrel is a great way to help pull them apart a little more effectively than by leaving the box straddling the Reformer. Don't you find that very few clients go all the way back for that awesome but totally upside down release after Hug and Tree? The Ladder Barrel makes the same release possible, but with a more comfortably supportive brace under the low back and a way less dramatic drop backward.
And what better way to exorcise (pun!) the last little bit of that airplane than by safely positioning your client in that lovely extended drape over the Spine Corrector for a Leg Series of Circles, Scissors and Bicycle followed by a scootch up over the hump for an assisted Around the World.
And because I have no shame and I always know where they've been (Why? Because I ask. Why? Because I care), I make up stories during the exercise Around the World about, you know, where they've been . . . around the world. It's fun. We laugh. They feel marvelous and so do I.
Then they leave, but I get to do it, or something like it, all over again.
This Studio Life is good. It's very very good.
P.S. And for Gail, who is just in from India, major ups for making it in for your session today. You haven't slept, your headache was just easing and you were late but girl, you made it. You did what Joe said to do, you kept faith with yourself. And somehow, in spite of all that, your hair looked fabulous.
And I'll eventually get over the fact that while in India you somehow missed dancing with an estimated 40,000 sex trade workers as Richard Gere led them in celebration over their recent commitment to practice safe sex. You probably missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity there, but hey, what do I know?